Threads of the Soul
by DeskRage
Summary: "Do not deceive yourself, Lucario. In order to be useful to our masters and comrades, we all learn skills against our nature."
1. Gravity

Lightning flashed as Aaron staggered into the attic. Half-blinded by the light and suddenly plunged into the musty blackness, he missed the step and crashed to the floor. The cold, slightly damp floorboards creaked eerily under his weight. His small body felt like it was made out of wood, hollow and stiff.

He'd been with him when he died. The old man had never been the same after…_The old fool caught his death in that snowstorm_, the knights and ladies had sniffed, _trying to save a common Pidgey, no less. _It had taken almost a year. But over the course of that year, his master slowly weakened. Aaron noticed his aura, dimming with every passing day, until tonight, when it had flickered out completely like a snuffed candle.

He found himself quashing the little voice in the depths of his soul that whispered that Aura connected him to everything that had a spark of life in it somewhere. Everything. But his Master, his one…friend, even, was gone. He squeezed his eyes shut, feeling a sort of tightening in his chest in that empty space beneath his breastbone.

He didn't notice the Pokémon's aura until it was practically on top of him. He opened his eyes. He could see nothing with his eyes. Struggling to draw breath, he looked for the thing on the Aura's plane. A large, circular flickering shape barely a few feet away from him hovered. He felt tendrils of cold mist touching his skin.

_You shouldn't go up there,_ the other boys had sniggered, _there's a Ghost Pokémon up there that'll eat your brains and steal the clothes off your corpse!_

But he'd never had a fear of Pokémon, Ghost or otherwise. He sat up slowly and hugged his knees, staring at the patch of space where the Pokémon hovered.

"Are you alone, too?" he found himself whispering.

The Pokémon materialized. It turned out to be a Haunter. It must have noticed Aaron's tears, for it tilted its body in a sort of confused fashion. But then, it levitated something to its right. In the darkness, it took Aaron a moment to realize it was a Pikachu doll. His eyes widened. The doll was made out of an expensive material, soft-looking with shiny threads. No one would have a doll like that except maybe…

He swallowed. The Haunter was bouncing the doll from hand to hand and around Aaron's head, as if it was proud of such a find.

"Then you know that probably belongs to the Princess, I think," he said softly. "But why would a Ghost want…" his sentence trailed off when the Haunter vanished into a diamond-like light. He shielded his eyes, now used to the darkness. When he blinked again, he felt his mouth go dry.

For a minute he was astounded at the fact he hadn't noticed its aura was completely different from a Ghost type, but couldn't help but stare at the creature in wonder. Its fur was a soft, almost ethereal pink like the palest dawn. Every time it moved an opal shimmer seemed to ripple across its coat. Its huge eyes gleamed with an eerie gleam of an alien innocence while at the same time communicating such frightening _age_ he couldn't help the breath catch in his throat as that gaze locked on his.

The Mew flew in a lazy circle, still clutching the Pikachu doll. Aaron scarcely dared to breathe, as if such a mortal action would chase it away. When it had completed the turn, the Mew bobbed as if excited. Aaron felt his fingers twitch. He almost reached out to touch it, but before he could muster up the courage, the Mew disappeared with a blink of pink light and a bell-like sound, like powdered diamond.

The Pikachu doll was gone as well. But with it, he found that the crushing guilt built up in his thin body was gone as well. He found himself slipping away into sleep, like a feather being carried away by a gentle breeze, his dreams punctuated by a being of light.

Almost a week after his master had been buried, he found himself going to the castle chapel, unsure if he was really going to ask the question until after he'd stepped through the doorway. His hopes to approach the priest on his terms were dashed, his footstep echoed loudly on the stone floor. The priest, who had been extinguishing candles turned. His face wrinkled in surprised softened in sympathy.

"Is there something I can help you with, Aaron?"

The boy's voice was small. "What do the stories say about Mew?"

The priest was not visually surprised by the unusual question. He motioned to the front pew. Aaron slipped through the crack in the doors and sat down. He was looking not quite at the priest, but instead at one of the stained glass windows behind the thin cleric.

"There are many stories about Mew," the priest's soft, dry voice echoed strangely in the chapel. "You of course know the one that the sight of it brings happiness to the one lucky enough to spot it. Others say Mew is the first Pokémon the Creator fashioned, formed from starlight and the origin of all the many Pokémon in the world. I've heard tales of Mew as a bringer of understanding, that those who see Mew learn to speak the language of Pokémon.

"But," he added, his voice taking on a slightly resigned note after Aaron had continued to stare after a short silence, "It has been also regarded as a symbol of death."

"I…see." Aaron looked down, staring at the tile floor.

"Did you see Mew? Is that troubling you?"

Aaron, unsure of what to think now, didn't answer. He could barely remember why he wanted to know in the first place, where he did hear for the first time that Mew was a double-edged omen. But omens, he knew, were silly. So why was he feeling cold inside?

At last he stood up. "I'm not troubled," he said, "Everything dies someday. Thank you for telling me the stories." His voice cracked a little on the latter phrase, but his face remained stoic.

"Aaron, wait."

The young Aura Guardian paused in his exit. The priest's voice was both irritating and strangely comforting at the same time. Like his Master's, on occasion. His stomach suddenly retreated out through his back and a shocking urge to just crumple down and cry was hindered by the fact his eyes felt dry and gummy. But those feelings were visceral, fleshy—it was as if his emotions had been pulled out of his body with a set of rusty pliers and he was watching himself as an impassive, dethatched bystander. In that dim, foggy way he wondered what on earth was wrong with him.

"If you need someone to talk to, I will always be available."

"Thank you, Father."

He had barely been able to control the waver in his voice. He fled.

The Riolu's earliest memories were that of lying prone on a grassy knoll with the tepid white sun soft on his fur. He recalled peering down at the dusty commotion that was the human there, in stark contrast to the green tangle and rough stone outcrops and spikes that jutted out of the thin rocky soil like old bones, it was neat, and brown—thick with the heat of many bodies and ringing with their warbling human voices. Moving along the narrow streets like so many bugs, the humans milled and carried and ran, ringing bells and ushering along Pokémon dragging…the Houndour had called them 'carts' or 'wagons'.

He could lose hours, just watching them. That was, until his mother limped up the knoll and sit by him for a moment to catch her breath before pulling him away to the quieter, heavier darkness of the surrounding forest.

Her nostrils twitched.

"_You were down there in the human nest again."_

The Riolu could not help but cringe at the soft, slightly hurt expression of betrayal in her red eyes. He didn't like to upset his mother. She seemed so young, even to him. But sometimes it was as if his paws had wills of their own, following the tug in his innermost insides that seemed to pull him with a magnetic force towards it. He squirmed.

He almost added that it was a _village_ and not a nest, but decided against it. Mother didn't care for that sort of thing. In her mind, there was no distinction. Perhaps there wasn't, but…

"_I didn't go _in." This was true. He had never actually set paw within the confines of the village.

His mother sighed though her nose and put her head on the ground, looking down. She made as if to shift her bad leg. After a moment of shuddery effort, she decided against it. The old scars that crisscrossed her right leg and lower back looked particularly raw and painful in the setting sun. It occurred to him for the first time that he had not asked how she acquired them. They had always been such an integral, normal part of Mother that it had never seemed necessary, nor had she ever volunteered the information.

"_Are you afraid of them, Mother?"_

She turned to look at him. Her eyes looked like they were on fire, reflecting the sun's reddening light. But it wasn't angry fire. It was more like…he frowned, unable to place it.

"_No."_

"_Some Pokémon think that they're all bad, though, right?" _There was a Noctowl that seemed to be just as old and craggy as the twisted oak she lived in. When she could be bothered to speak only said things like, _"They're all trouble. Their powers are of destruction. They know not the powers of life." _She had said these things while pecking at the bones of some small Pokémon clutched in her claws, but Riolu hadn't commented. He'd rather thanked her for her opinion—whatever he actually thought of it. Most others seemed to be indifferent, or fearful.

He remembered asking why. The Noctowl had fluffed of her feathers and blinked disdainfully at him. _"You've not lived long or seen enough to know why. Not that you probably will. Your kind doesn't tend to live very long anyway. Perhaps your breed has a natural inclination towards them! The irony!" _she had screeched and flapped off, leaving Riolu unsure if he should be offended, but mostly just confused. Why wouldn't his kind live very long? He knew instinctively there must be others out there, even though they did not live in packs like the Houndoom or Skarmory. But what was a long life for a Lucario? He didn't even know how old his mother was.

"_Those Pokémon," _his mother said, bringing him back to the present, _"are ignorant. There are good humans as well as evil ones, just the same that there are good plants to eat and poisonous ones."_

"_So why does it bother you that I go down there? I don't get into any trouble and I'm always careful."_

To this his mother said nothing for a long time, staring down at the settlement, her mouth grim. Sometimes his mother appeared young—like when spring came, or when the sun lit up her pelt.

"_Because humans, good or evil, do not know their own power. And they have power, my son. Once you get involved with humans, you change. And once you do, you can never change back."_

"_What kind of change?"_

"_The kind of change that comes when two saplings grow together, twisting around each other until they become a single thing. Inseparable. Stronger than any single tree."_

"_What do you mean? That doesn't sound like a bad thing."_

His mother narrowed her eyes. Her tail tapped thoughtfully. The Riolu did not feel any bad feelings like sadness or anger on his mother, but…there was a strange discomfort, like the feeling of cloying mud crusted between the toes of one's paws. He waited a long time for her to speak, but after a deep sigh, she gave the Riolu an affectionate lick between his ears with her warm, rasping tongue before prompting him to get up with her paw.

They left the knoll and headed back to their home, a shallow, dry cave midway up a small valley face and shielded by the clinging shrubbery. Hadite, the blue crystals that studded the land here crowned the area right above the cave opening, glowed dimly. The Riolu peered out of the cave opening. He could pick out the spot in the night's darkness where the human village was, haloed by a ring of torches flickering like red stars. He looked back at his mother. She was sound asleep in their warm nest of dried leaves and grasses.

The Riolu flicked his tail and looked down in disappointment. She never really answered him. As it stood, he doubted she would.

_Change…_he thought as he snuggled deep into her side, careful to avoid the bony spike jutting from her chest. Change that can't be reversed.

A series of images blossomed behind his eyes. Hard green little buds opening into soft colorful flowers, the birth of a little river out of the earth…the growth of going from Riolu to Lucario…

He laid his head on his paws, willing himself to sleep and put the confusion to rest.

When he woke up, he was disappointed to find that it had not.

It was the dawn before the dawn—the pale blue lightening of the sky that heralded the pink sun. The Riolu poked his head out of the cave. The stars were starting to wink out, as if cosmic eyelids were closing over them and now they were going to sleep. He glanced back at his mother. She would probably wake up soon, when the sun really started to rise. Should he risk it?

He probably would not get another chance to talk to the Houndour. Once the day started proper, it was very difficult to find him when he wasn't protecting his—_master's—_pups or performing some other kind of work. Besides, it would only be for a little while. And it wasn't that far to travel alone, he'd done it before with no incident. Well, except for that one encounter with the crazy human crashing about in the woods with a Makuhita. And Makuhita was not very fast. Less so was the human. The Riolu nodded resolutely. Yes, he would. He would be back before Mother knew it.

He scrabbled out of the cave. He nearly lost his grip trying to climb down—the rock here was pretty unstable sometimes—but managed to make it down without any further incident and started off towards the town at a run.

The she-Lurcario felt her son's waves, bright and loud as it left the warm shelter of their den and receded into the distance. She opened her eyes and pushed herself up. Her leg shuddered out a ripple of cold pain before surrendering to her will as she forced it to move without trembling. Fall was coming. It would be deep. She shivered, but quickly hardened herself. She would survive. She was good at that. She had lived to bear a pup. She would live to raise him, and she had survived winters before and after this injury.

She followed his aura from a distance. She could tell where he was and what he was doing at long distance if she had to—he'd never been too much further than several hundred jumps, but she was sure she could.

She did not understand his need to know more about humans. She would have preferred him going inwards to learn about his growing powers as she had. Of course, she would start teaching him soon, but as it was now he could barely read even ripples of the waves that all things emanated. Still, there was a part of her that refused to condemn him. It was as if a river was tugging him towards the humans, and she could be a gentle push or a stone in the rapids.

It was a frustrating feeling.

Whatever his ultimate fate, she had to protect him.

It wouldn't be a bad thing, visiting the edge of the village. Being familiar with the surrounding environment was key to survival, and she had noticed some odd humans the other day. The hides and plant fibers they wore draped over their bodies seemed brighter and smelled newer than those of the local humans. It was in both of their best interests to discover what was behind _that_.

Careful to make sure her pup was not too far from where she could reach him if she had to, and with an eye on the sun to gauge the time, the she-Lucario bounded towards the village gates for a vantage point.

The Houndour lived on the edge of the village, sharing a house with his human masters. Or at least in the winter. In the springtime, summer, and even early fall he'd come to find that the Houndour lived outside. He found the Pokémon sleeping just off the step that marked the entrance to the house. There was a soft sheen of frost coating the Houndour's bony armor—it wouldn't be long before he would be sleeping inside again.

There was something different about him, though. Riolu couldn't really see it, but the energy waves he could feel surrounding the Houndour seemed _bigger_, more like flames instead of embers. The one visual difference, however, was the lovingly braided, colored cord tied around his neck.

At the smell of his approach, the Houndour's nose twitched. His eyes flickered open as a territorial growl escaped his throat instinctively. He curbed it upon noticing the Riolu several lengths off, swallowing the threat and sitting up, stubby tail wagging.

"_Riolu! It's been a while."_

The Riolu stopped within a half-length from the Houndour. He glanced over his shoulder, eyes flicking about for shadows in the woods behind him. Nothing, yet. He nodded at the Houndour.

"_It is good to see you again."_

"_What brings you?" _The Houndour scratched an ear. _"Not that I mind, but the late harvest is starting soon, and I'll be needed to chase out the vermin in the fields." _He paused. _"No offense. You look like you're getting bigger!" _he twitched his ears approvingly. _"Are you going to evolve soon?"_

"_Evolve?"_

"_You know—change. Grow strong. That's the word, you know, for when you become like your parents."_

"_Oh."_

"_I know I'm getting ready to. I can feel it, in my insides." _He stood up and snapped his teeth experimentally_. "Soon, I'll be so powerful and dangerous that no one will think to come near my master's pups! I'll be able to fight off any attacker! I'll be able to get things with my tail!" _he waggled his short stubby aforementioned limb in excitement. The Riolu thought about the Houndour's practice: his teeth effortlessly chomping through sturdy logs of wood and on bones, the Houndour dashing through a man-made "path" full of blocks and sticks he had to leap over or twist around—and the sight of the master and the Houndour, taking a short break in the shade of the tree overlooking the house._ "So what about you?" _He shoved his nose into the Riolu's face. He snorted. _"You smell like the wild."_

"_I…" _the Riolu frowned. He felt no change in his own energy, no bubbling of strength. Mother had told him his change wasn't the result of time, but of joy and contentment. He told the Houndour such, who cocked his head and uttered a whining sound in response.

"_It's a wonder that your kind ever evolve."_

"_Why do you say that?"_

"_Ah, I keep forgetting that you're barely into your second year." _TheRiolu failed to see how that made any difference but listened anyway. _"It's just…well, this is going to sound weird, but you wild Pokémon don't usually seem that happy much of the time. Who wouldn't be? I mean…" _he pointed his nose at the sky as a Pidgey flapped overhead, "…_I can't imagine living without my family to protect."_

Riolu knew flocks of flying Pokémon that banded together and sang at night. Wild Houndour and Houndoom howled at the moon to commemorate closeness. He knew contentment when he and his mother sat side by side watching the stars and listening to her voice tell him stories of the world. He could feel balance emanating through the earth, in the direction of the mighty crags that made up the World Tree deep in the mountains.

Disconcertingly, he couldn't think of many times that he'd felt in the way that Houndour described. And could he be, knowing that life as a wild Pokémon entailed nothing more than gathering food, defending territory and learning of your powers from your parent, and then finding a mate and…

"_What's wrong?"_ The Houndour asked, sniffing at him. _"Are you all right?"_

The Riolu swallowed. He felt like his blood had been stopped up. His heart thudded against the walls of his tiny chest as his lungs seemed to freeze. He'd just foreseen the rest of his life before he lived it.

The rest of his life.

The _rest of his life_.

Describing the despair would be like trying to describe a dream, like the dread that takes place in a nightmare when death is approaching and you know you'll wake up right when it gets you—

"_Riolu?" _the concerned bark in the Houndour's voice snapped him back. He shook his head, trying to dispel the feeling that was clinging to his guts. It was like trying to shake off dried tree sap from your fur. _"I'm sorry. Did I upset you?" _the Houndour whined in sympathy and bowed his head on the ground apologetically.

The Riolu took a shaky breath. _"No. I'm fine. I…" _he wasn't sure whether to thank the Houndour or not. The conversation left him feeling weak, as if he had run from here to the World Tree without stopping to draw breath.

The Houndour might have been about to say something when the door to the house opened. Normally, the Riolu would have bolted, but that morning he found himself frozen, unable to move as two human pups, one older and one younger came out. For him it was difficult to pinpoint their ages, but because of their smell he could tell that the older one was nearing the stage of his evolution, while the younger, a female, still had a ways to go.

"What is that? Did you catch a Pokémon, Houndour?" Older Brother cried, stopping to kneel next to the Houndour and ruffle his ears. Houndour licked at the Older Brother's face in response, wagging his tail so hard it looked like his whole back half was moving.

"It's so cute!" Little Sister cried. She toddled _towards_ the Riolu, smiling widely. She was missing her two front teeth. She was so close the Riolu could she had a light spattering of spots—freckles, he remembered—across her nose. Her hand loomed in front of the Riolu's face. Every instinct screamed at him to run, to release the energy it felt like he should have had in his muscles.

"May, wait!" Wait, how did the Riolu understand human speech? The words were unfamiliar, and yet, he felt like he understood everything they said. Their vocalizations didn't matter. It was like meaning was being carried through the waves. "You'll scare it off!"

"_Calm down," _Houndour encouraged. _"These are my master's pups. They have kind hands."_

The human's palm brushed his muzzle. He sneezed. May giggled, and when he didn't move away, she placed her little hand on his head, rubbing the fur. The little girl's hand was incredibly soft—too soft to be flesh, like the skin on a flower petal, but with little wrinkles and creases like the veins in a leaf, but deeper. It was alien, but somehow, it felt right.

He felt a rumble in his chest, and belatedly realized he was purring.

"_See?"_ The Houndour said, a hint of smugness in his tone. The Riolu looked at him out of the corner of his eye, grinning a Pokémon grin.

"_Yeah."_

After an exhausting game of tug-of-war and a chase around the farmyard, the Riolu and the Houndour were laying against one another in the early sunlight. May was resting her hand on his back. Big Brother had gone off somewhere to get something. The Riolu was just starting to nod off when he heard a holler. He looked up, to find Big Brother trotting towards them, holding a rectangular object in his hands. He smelled like dust, wood, overlaid with the strangest smell yet: a sort of cloying, burning herb.

"_He brought back a book?" _the Houndour pricked his ears forward with interest.

"_Book?"_

"_They have leaves called 'pages' inside. Humans have bad memories, so they have to carve them onto the pages."_

"I got it!" Big Brother said triumphantly, flopping down on the ground and opening the object with a light crackling sound. Inside were flat, pale, perfectly rectangular leaves that smelled vaguely of dry bark and human. "Father Syrac said I could borrow it for a little while." He heard the sound of what seemed like flapping leaves and turned to see the boy flipping through the leaves between the book. His tongue was sticking out a little in concentration.

"It's a…um…" curious as to what the contents of this book could be, the Riolu scrambled up into May's lap and peered down, "Here it is! I think!"

The Riolu looked down. In the first second he looked at it he saw nothing but scribbles on a tawny piece of paper, but in the second moment he realized—after he stopped trying to use smell and hearing to understand it and just looked at it with his eyes— he was looking at an image of himself and his mother. Or something that looked very close, drawn with neat black lines. There were unfamiliar images, blocky and neat that were printed underneath the images.

"Riolu and Lucario," Big Brother said. "See the symbols on the opposite page? The scale there means that it's a spirit of justice and fairness. The star shape beneath it means that it's powerful and rare, which is why we've never seen one before. But there's not much else…" Big Brother patted the Riolu's head. His hands were a little rougher, and larger. "We don't know much about you guys. Is that what your mama looks like?"

The Riolu growled an affirmative. Big Brother smiled. But the moment he did so, Riolu he jerked his head up at the sun and nearly blinded himself. His feet grew cold. How long had he been in this place?

The Riolu squirmed out of May's lap, eyes wild. Houndour yelped. All three in their own way asked him what was wrong, to which he responded, _"I have to go. My mother—she must be so worried about me!"_

"_Oh—well—come back soon…hey, wait!"_

"Don't go that way!" Big Brother suddenly shouted. "You'll run into…"

But the Riolu wasn't listening. Branches and sharp mountain grasses slapped and scratched at his face and limbs as he tore through the woods, his heart pounding not with the effort but with dread. Mother was rarely angry, but more than her anger, he didn't want to see again the crushing disappointment in her eyes, in the sight droop of her mouth, the hurt that he would directly disobey her as if she was not worth listening to…it made his stomach feel like it was trying to eat itself.

So focused was he on getting back to the cave, he didn't notice the attacker until an incredible force like a giant hand slammed into him from behind, sending him flying through the air before crashing to the ground. His head hurt like someone had wedged a sharp rock in there, and for a moment, he couldn't breathe or see. He instinctively rolled out of the way as a pair of massive, rock-hard hands smashed into the ground where he had just been, leaving deep imprints in the hard earth. He stumbled back—it hurt to stand, his eyes widening in horror at his attacker.

"Go, Hariyama! We've got him!" A thin human with scraggly hair and a wild yellow smile pointed excitedly at him while clutching a noose in his left hand. Riolu recognized his smell and his appearance instantly, shocked at his own inability to sense his opponents—how had they gotten that close?

And the Pokémon—Makuhita had changed, _evolved_ into Hariyama.

"_So!" _the huge Pokémon bellowed, thumping a wheel-sized hand onto its belly in challenge. That belly, which appeared to be fat at first, did not even jiggle—instead producing a slap sound that reminded the Riolu of boulders cracking into each other after a long fall down a hillside. _"We meet again! I would have hoped you'd have evolved by now! A true test of strength is something I was looking forward to!"_

He barreled towards the Riolu like a rolling wave of thunder. The Riolu waited until the last moment to roll out of the way, hissing at the pain in his leg. The shockwave from the larger Pokémon's charge caused the ground to tremble beneath his feet, almost throwing him off balance. In desperation, he flung out his paws, not even sure what he was doing, just following it the sparking, tingling energy that seemed to be gathering in their tips. With a scrowling scream, he thrust his paws away from himself. A smattering of strange blue energy that the Riolu had never actually seen burst from his paws in a watery blaze and smoldered into the Hariyama's face. The force of his own power flung the Riolu backwards against a tree.

The Hariyama growled and pain and shook away the residue of the blue energy. The Riolu was shaking from nose to tail tip with barely contained energy, torn between flight and fight. The pain in his leg was wearing off. Shuddering, he tested it before launching into a terrified sprint—perhaps he could outrun his massive opponent.

"Stop it, Hariyama! Don't let it escape!"

Hariyama roared and charged after him for a few steps before leaping into the air behind him and slamming into the ground. The resounding impact threw the Riolu's balance off critically, causing him to nose into the ground painfully. He turned, just in time to see Hariyama's palm crush him further into the ground, squeezing the air out of his lungs.

Riolu scrabbled feebly, but his entire torso was pinned by only one of Hariyama's hands. Desperate, he bit it, ignoring the pain of the firm flesh pressing against his small, sharp teeth and tried not to gag on the viscous fatty blood seeping into his mouth. Hariyama roared and reflexively yanked its hand back.

"_You have fight in you! But that will not be enough to defeat me!"_

"The king has taken a personal interest in this village. Your people have a very high ratio of human to Pokémon, and those good with them in a few years time may be eligible to become Pokémon Knights of Rota. Such honors do not come the way of _commoners_ very often. That combined with this place's strategic placement –several other factors of course, but we need not go into those now—makes this an ideal place for…investment."

The she-Lucario crouched in the shadows with her back pressed to the wall of a dark wooden building. Its carved surface scraped against her back as her antennae quivered in concentration as she tried to force substantial images out of the energy waves her kind were privy to. It was difficult, trying to block out so much other energy going on outside the building and in the town. Sneaking in had not been too much of a problem, staying hidden a little harder, and trying to make sense of all the pent-up energy in the room left her with very little to spare, though she made sure she could still read her pups waves despite the distance between them.

This was an appropriate investment of her time, she was sure. It had been too long since she last came into the human nest to make sure this area was still a good place to live. Moving homes every few seasons was generally a wise thing to do in the case of her kind. However, after her accident, she had to consider it very carefully, and so far, living so close to humans had not had an…adverse…effect on her offspring. Sure coming to the nest was dangerous and the Pokémon of the forest often scolded her for it. Some chattered at her folly, others shook their heads despairingly. Lucario never last long. There's a reason there aren't that many.

The she-Lucairo had often considered retorting with the idea that perhaps Lucario weren't as fecund as most other Pokémon, but as a result, her offspring was worth far more than theirs. But she rarely wasted her time and breath on such foolishness. She could maintain her pride with dignity.

Perhaps this was why she did not stop her son from visiting that Houndour and his humans. For as much as they were part of the World of wild Pokémon under the jurisdiction—they would have tittered at her use of that uniquely human word—of the World Tree's Mew, it seemed, at least, in her admittedly meager experience, that humans drew them, like Bedrills to honey.

There were several presences in the room. The one speaking felt cold, uptight and thin with a voice to match. He—for the pheromones indicated maleness—was flanked by several other imposing presences: two large and burly, wearing bits of metal and heavy hide, and one other. Strangely enough, his waves were bright, luminous, like a recently fed flame. The she-Lucario had never felt such a presence in men before. Only in other Lucario had she seen it.

On the other side of the flat surface that the humans were sitting at, several other humans, their skins darkened by long hours in the sun and lacking the oddly neat and groomed appearance of the richly dressed others sat with their hands together, their bushy faces furrowed in an expression she had learned to identify as confusion.

"So you say, my lord," the bushy human said. His voice was rough, like pebbles tumbling over shale, rougher and warmer than the first voice, "But why are you bothering to tell us this, even when the nobles and the king have already made up their minds?"

"Your voice doubts my words. Be careful, peasant," the thin voice snapped. "Trust me when I say there are plenty of promising youths here. And we let you know of well in advance of the expansion project so that you can ready your villagers."

"What Sir Gregory means," interrupted a third voice. This one was smooth and woody, like a young oak. It belonged to the shining presence. The she-Lucario could not help but perk up her ears. It was a good voice. "Is that this is an opportunity for both the common folk and the gentry to benefit. I know that at least some of us here come out of respect. My late master and I both were born common, but I've inherited a tradition of nobility."

Something ironic and mocking flickered in the energies of the men surrounding the shining presence. The she-Lucario knew it to be silent mockery.

"The same," the young oak voice continued, "may be said of many of your young men here. Some may be chosen to become Pokémon Knights.

As for the rest, you should all benefit from a larger population and the benefit of more scholars and traders coming here to study more of the Pokémon and land in the area as well as boost your economy."

"Expanding is costly, my lord. Not just for us, but for the local Pokémon. Especially if we displace too much of the hadite in the ground. We are very careful of what we harvest, what we catch, and what we kill here. We need the Pokémon."

"Young Squire Aaron is not yet a lord," sniffed the cold voice, "He is however, almost of age and the only Aura Guardian left to represent that sect in Rota."

There was a brief, awkward silence. Finally, the bushy man frowned. "Excuse me. Squire Aaron, then." There was something apologetic in his tone.

The she-Lucario then understood. Of course. To build more of these nests to accommodate more humans living here, if what she gathered was correct, they needed to make them out of something. She looked at the woods beyond the village. The forests here were old; with veins of power that ran all the way back to the World Tree.

She would have stayed to listen more. And then what felt like a muted scream echoed in her mind accompanied by a burst of sickeningly familiar energy.

Her son was in trouble.

At the exact moment, she heard a scrape and a clatter, followed by surprised grunts and shouts.

"Aaron, what's the matter?"

"It's a—" he broke off. "I must go. Please excuse me."

The she-Lucario did not stay to listen any more. She was already flying, her heart pounding, and every beat smacked her with her own foolishness. Conflicting regrets whirled through her mind. She should have stayed with him. She should have taken him with her.

And now he was in danger, in pain.

Now that she listened with her ears and not her waves, she could hear a roar of challenge. The sound lent speed to her paws, energy surging through her body with every terrified beat of her heart and every twinge of her bad leg, reminding her of why she rarely ran like this.

Nothing else mattered.

_To be continued…_

Notes: I know Riolu normally can't use anything even resembling Aura Sphere unless specially bred and trained like the one in the anime. However, Sir Aaron's Lucario is also the only one who can speak using Aura. I would chalk this up to an exceptional talent he was born with.


	2. Freezing

Chapter 2: Freezing

The Riolu choked and pushed himself to his feet, breathing heavily. A few drops of blood dribbled down his throat, dragging a cough out of his small body. It hurt. Everything hurt. He tried to summon that energy again, holding his paws out in front of him. Nothing except a sharp sparkle of white-blue light crackled on the edges of his paws before flickering out like swamp fire.

He was so tired. It was as if he had swum upstream for miles against rapids. Suddenly, it felt like everything was in slow motion: Hariyama charging again, hand thrust outward as if to punch the Riolu's guts out through his spine, the ground trembling, the human shouting, and then—

A familiar roar, something between a screech and a growl ripped through the air as the Riolu's mother surged over his head and directly into the path of the Hariyama, silhouetted by the high sun's rays. For a horrible moment the Riolu thought she would be crushed by the oncoming attack. But instead of meeting the Hariyama's attack, she roared again and hurled a crackling ball of the familiar lightning blue energy. It collided with the Hariyama's hand with a small red explosion. A cloud of black smoke bloomed into the air.

The Riolu's mother barely touched the ground before leaping again. Smoke trailed from her limbs like streamers as she lunged at the Hariyama's face, striking at his eyes with the spike on her forepaw. A fountain of dark blood spurted into the smoke; she landed in a crouch behind her opponent before whirling to face him again.

"Hariyama!" the human yelped. His voice cracked strangely, as if energy or anger caused it to shriek a bit. His sallow face turned beet red. "No!" he rounded on the Riolu's mother. "You stupid beast! Look what you've done! Hariyama, break her back!"

"_My son, run!"_ She cried, dodging. She started to wheel around, turning so fast that she scraped her side on a cobaltflower, stone?—no, her leg was already giving her trouble. _"Get away from here!"_

The Riolu was frozen for several heartbeats, unable to comprehend what was happening. Why was Hariyama continuing to fight? He was blinded in one eye, and screaming in agony. Why was he still fighting? And mother…with her leg…

He couldn't leave her. Never mind that he was no match for the Hariyama, never mind he was weak, he couldn't lose his mother.

"_STOP IT!" _he howled. _"Please, stop! Mother!"_

His mother had been hit. She slammed into the ground on her bad leg, the impact so powerful she couldn't even cry out. Hariyama leaped into the sky bringing his hands over his head, surging towards the ground to crush her—

Several things happened at once. A gust of wind, a huge winged shadow, a throaty, reptilian roar, another human, dropping out the sky between the dam and the Hariyama; he thrust out his arms and threw a _shield_—a blue iridescent half-sphere in front of his in an incredible arc of light. The Hariyama had time to grunt in surprise as it crashed into the shield. The extra force caused the Hariyama to bounce off the shield, an almost comical sight until it smashed backwards into a nearby tree, snapping it in half as it finally toppled to the ground in a bloody heap.

The silence was so thick it could have been a deep layer of dry snow. The residual smoke peeled away, revealing the second human, standing in front of an old, black-hide Charizard. Sweat glistened under a head of night-colored blue black hair that reminded the Riolu something of springy tufts of grass that a large Pokémon had slept in, sticking up in some spots, flat in others. He was tall and lean, but it was his eyes that caught the Riolu. At first his gaze had seemed a little unfocused and confused, as if he was unsure of what he was seeing. But upon meeting the Riolu's they seemed strange: deep, deep and blue like those cave pools that go down and down and down until they turn black, possibly boring down into the core of the very earth. At the same time, they brimmed with waves that reminded the Riolu of his mother and of himself.

"Aura?" the human muttered as he knelt down beside the Riolu's mother, who was stirring. "Such auras…"

The Riolu blinked, snapped back to the situation at hand. His head felt woozy, as if he'd been held, frozen for a long time.

He staggered over to his mother, nuzzling her side, unable to keep the tears from dripping from his eyes. They were like acid on his cheeks.

This was his entire fault.

"_Mother_," he sobbed, burying himself into the fur around her chest. _"Mother, are you all right?"_

She pushed herself up onto her side and winced. She looked at the young human, who had knelt down by his mother and was examining her leg with a critical eye.

"May I?" he asked, as if she could respond. Weirdly enough, she nodded—seeing his mother fall into such a familiar human gesture was jarring, but strangely appropriate to the Riolu. The wave-human felt over her body, applying pressure as if to test for pain. He only got a reaction when he reached her leg. She hissed and pulled the limb away. "Sorry."

The Riolu must have been staring at him with a frightened expression, because the human offered him an apologetic looking little smile. "Don't worry. She'll be all right. There's not much I can do about this wound though." He made as if to pat the Riolu, but after a snarl from his mother he withdrew. He bowed concession, a ghost of a smile hovering on his lips.

The pup's mother drew him close and started to clean his wounds with her rough, warm tongue.

The Riolu burned with shame. He kept mewling 'sorry', over and over again until his mother tapped him lightly on the muzzle.

"_You are safe. It no longer matters."_

The wave-human watched from a distance. His face was slightly furrowed, as if he was thinking deeply about something. The Riolu could see out of the corner of his eye in the gap in his mother's arms.

A pained yowl from the briar bushes snapped the silence in half.

"Hey—don't let them get away!"

This startled all three of them into action. The wave-human jumped as if he'd been bitten.

"You need to go, now! Get out of here."

_I am grateful._

The Riolu flinched. The voice had sounded in his head. His mother's voice. She nodded to the human, who offered her a little bob of acknowledgement before she scooped the Riolu into her arms and limped as fast as she could into the shadows of the mountain woods.

Over her shoulder, the Riolu watched the human, keeping his eyes on those strange blue ones until the human vanished from his sight.

* * *

Aaron made sure to keep himself composed for what was coming next. He leaned against a tree with his arms folded over his chest, listening to Dylan pull inch-long thorns out of his—

"Aaron! What is wrong with you?" his fellow squire's round face was the color of old meat. His flinty eyes flashed as if striking steel. "Why did you do that, huh? That was a Lucario pup! I almost had it!"

Aaron sighed through his nose, not bothering to look Dylan in the face, instead closing his eyes in exasperation. "Riolu, I believe. As you saw, it was still with its _mother_."

"So?"

For all that this boy was the son of a noble, his brains were about as precious as mud, "What if it hadn't been weaned? It would have died. It was obviously still a dependent." Actually, it was clear the pupwas definitely not dependent on his mother's milk anymore. He didn't know anything about the species except the scribbled footnote describing just how little they knew of them Palace Libarary, but he hazarded the little creature was at least a year or so old. The shape of the mother and the muscle tone of the pup was proof enough of that, but people like Dylan could hardly tell the difference between their left and their right hands, let alone Pokémon physiology.

"Shove off," Dylan growled, clearly unable to think of a rebuttal. "Don't get in my way of catching rare Pokémon again. If you do, I'll…" his voice might as well have trailed off, but Aaron was no longer listening. He was trying to read the residue Aura of the Lucario family. He always wondered if there were types of Pokémon who could use Aura. It was obvious to anyone who spent time around them to realize that most seemed to have a sixth sense about things, but never had he encountered any who could use Aura directly. Until today.

He pulled out a small, battered field notebook from the inside pocket of his cloak and a piece of charcoal and started to draw the few pawprints that weren't too badly smudged. It was clear that the she-Lucario and the Riolu had understood most of what he was saying. So perhaps it was not so much the words they understood articulated feelings communicated through Aura. This idea seemed supported by the fact he'd heard the she-Lucario utter actual thanks, not a word so much as a thought…and even the little one at least gave the impression of being able to understand simple messages.

A hand on his shoulder dragged him roughly from his thoughts. Dylan spun him around to shout in his face, "Are you listening to a word I'm saying?"

Aaron was just about to shove his hip under Dylan's belt in order to send him flying into the bushes with his Hariyama when he registered the auras of the other Knights barely a hundred yards away.

"You might want to put me down," he said, his voice cold and smooth as frost-covered marble. "You'll embarrass yourself."

Dylan seemed to take this to mean that Aaron could take him in a fight. The question was one up for debate, but at the moment, Aaron held on to the last vestiges of angry outrage that remained from Dylan's attack on the mother Lucario and her pup. If Dylan wanted the broken nose he deserved, he would get it, Royal Guard or no Royal Guard.

And he did ask for it, too.

Dylan plunged his bony fist into Aaron's jaw, but the moment the flesh connected Aaron shoved his knee into his opponent's gut. The impact forced Dylan to let go, gagging. Aaron staggered a little from the impact, wiping the blood dribbling from the corner of his mouth away. He was right about to jump into an attack when Sir Gregory, Dylan's master, exploded out of the woods on his Rapidash, grinding to a halt just behind. The other attendants filed more slowly out of the woods.

Both Aaron and Dylan snapped to attention. Sir Gregory swung off the back of his Rapidash. Aaron couldn't help but note he didn't even acknowledge it, where his own Master would have at least patted his old Charizard on the flank.

"Well. What happened?" Sir Gregory's armor clanked as he stomped up towards the boys. "Is that your Hariyama wounded back there? What is going on?"

Both boys stared at the ground. It would be impossible to say anything without incriminating the other. The fear of looking petulant was quite the silencer. However, as Aaron was no one to impress, that fear only inhibited Dylan for a few seconds. The story was short, simple, and predictable: Dylan had been looking for Pokémon to catch, as everyone knew he was looking to capture his second creature and a rare one besides. He finally stumbled upon one of the rarest of the rare: a lone Riolu pup! Of course he would attempt to catch it and train his Hariyama besides. The opportunity had been ruined however, by a meddling Aaron, who swooped in on his master's Charizard and chased it off.

"Your Hariyama seems to be missing an eye among other injuries. You say a Riolu pup managed to do that all on its own?" Aaron's growled.

"Quiet, Aaron!" snapped Sir Gregory. "Be so kind as to allow him to finish."

Aaron felt his face get hot. He clenched his fists imperceptibly. Sir Gregory would never speak to another squire that way. Dropping his title and speaking to him like misbehaving stable boy. No, he'd never speak to another _noble_ that way. The rudeness was chafing, but not unfamiliar.

Dylan tried stopping up the hole in his story by saying the Riolu was exceptionally strong. Aaron found this ironic, because it was perhaps the only thing in the other's story that was perfectly true whether or not he knew it.

"So, Aaron. What have you got to say for yourself?"

Aaron lifted his head and met Sir Gregory's pond-scum green stare.

"It wasn't like that, Sir."

"Oh?"

"The Riolu pup's mother took Dylan's Hariyama's eye."

"There seems to be no reason to take Squire Aaron's words over Squire Dylan's." One of the other Pokémon knights mounted on a Dodrio said with a haughty cough.

"Neither has ever been accused of being a liar, though."

"That is debatable, and there is the question of lineage. It wouldn't be the fault of the Aura Guardians if they were more given to such low actions, it is a natural thing, I would suppose."

"I suppose it's up to Sir Gregory to discipline him. After all, it is his Squire who was offended and Aaron has no master of his own."

"What about compensation for the lost Pokémon?" Sir Gregory cut in. "If not for you Aaron, Dylan would have acquired a new Pokémon, one with power besides and one of the rarest in this area. Such chances do not come every day. How will you make up for it, I wonder? You have no Pokémon." The phrase was scornful. "Except perhaps that old Charizard or Pidgeotto belonging to your late master. "

"They're not mine to forfeit."

"Your master is dead, he cannot claim the Pokémon. Or would you prefer to forfeit the first creature you actually catch?"

Aaron had heard it all before. It didn't bother him at all. No matter his fists were clenched so tightly he'd lost feeling in his fingers. They talked of Pokémon as if they were possessions to be traded around. Then again, they talked the same of women, so why should that change when applied to Pokémon? He thought bitterly.

He looked at his master's old Charizard. Apparently he was so confident of the situation he saw no reason to pay attention. Or it could have been his age. Or both. There he was, staring off into the bushes with a glazed look on his scarred old face…and then he turned to look at Aaron directly in the eyes before gesturing in that direction with his tail.

Aaron flicked his eyes over to the bushes. It was hard to see with his eyes. He tapped into the Aura, the world becoming a thing of shadow of ethereal blue lines and saw—his heart leapt into his throat. He could scarcely keep a smile from his lips. He blinked his thanks to the Charizard, who yawned and put his head back on his paws, satisfied.

"Gentlemen, despite your arguments, neither side has presented irrefutable proof for their version of the story," a small voice piped up. Aaron couldn't help but be surprised. He'd never heard the soft-spoken Squire—no, he was a knight, now—_Sir _Cennar venture forth an opinion in front of so many before. Even in Aaron's mind the title seemed to fit him a little big.

He was the third son of the House of Toren . His two brothers, universally considered to be tall, dark, dashing and talented, were married to ladies with substantial dowries besides. Cennar was quite literally—and often referred to—as a pale imitation of his brothers. He was built like a scarespearow, with prematurely grayed hair and washed out chalky eyes. He had a reputation for being weak and bookish with an interest in handling Pokémon as opposed to battling with them. It was something that even Aaron, who generally stayed out of social politics knew publically mortified his family. As if that wasn't enough, Cennar, as the youngest son had little hope of inheriting anything from his father had thus had to learn a trade, in his case, law.

The poor fellow had been recently knighted. Most thought that it was because his master died about two weeks ago of food poisoning and the nobles thought it too much of a pain to reassign him a master. He was of age, after all. But he, unlike Aaron merited enough notice to at least have that courtesy: Aaron had been left to finish his tutelage alone.

Cennar's interactions with Aaron mostly consisted of meaningless conversations on where to find things in the library and timid requests for Aaron to help him reach a high book on the shelves when they were young. And never in Aaron's memory had Cennar spoken out in opposition to his peers.

Before anyone could tell him to shut up though, Aaron stepped in, mentally thanking the knight. His heart pounded. Feeling angry and bold, he spoke, "Sir Cennar that is an excellent observation. But luckily, I do know of an objective witness to this event."

Aaron walked to the opposite edge of the clearing and bent down at the foot of a foliage-covered tree stump and gently pried away the vegetation. A small oval shaped blue flower amidst a clump of hadite sat at its base. The ground was scuffed and the tip of the crystalline flower had been bloodied. He hoped it was the she-Lucario who had touched it; otherwise he would be in very deep trouble.

"Do any of you gentlemen know what this is?"

Aaron was biting the inside of his cheeks at the smug expressions dripping off the faces of the knights like hot candle wax.

"It's a time flower," ventured Sir Cennar. He looked excited in a schoolboy-ish way. "I've never seen one before, but they're supposed to record events in images and respond to the Aura of—ouch!"

Someone had elbowed him. No one commented.

"You're correct, Sir Cennar. Let us see what this impartial witness has to show us."

Aaron touched the flower.

There wasn't much of a dispute after that.

It wasn't two minutes after the revelation that the other members of the Royal Guard clattered off in a huff. Aaron let them go, content that he'd been saved, on no small part thanks to his master's old Charizard and Cennar.

Cennar, oddly enough, had not gone too far. Aaron could not see him, but he could sense his Aura clearly by an old boulder not too far off while the others went riding home. He wondered blithely what the knight wanted. Thanks, perhaps. Aaron had no trouble with that.

There was still one thing left to do before he set off.

His master's Charizard opened one eye. Despite the fact that his odd black hide—it seemed fitting that his master would have discovered a strange shining Pokémon like this—was silvered and scarred with age, his eye remained fiery and purple. However, ever since the death of his master a glueyness seemed to linger there, a sticky grief that sapped the old Pokémon's strength with every day. However, at Aaron's gentle touch, he growled contentedly and pushed himself up. Aaron winced at the pops and cracks as the great beast shakily spread his wings.

"I'm sorry for earlier. You shouldn't be flying me around, at your age. But thanks you to, a Riolu's safe, and so am I."

The Charizard snorted affectionately. He bent his long neck over, as if indicating that Aaron should get on. Aaron shook his head.

"You fly on ahead. I'll see you back at the castle."

The Charizard did not insist. He seemed to shrug his great wings and winced as they cracked with the effort. _If you say so,_ he seemed to say. With a croaky belch that was probably meant to be a roar, the old beast heaved himself into the sky. It took him a few awkward moments to gain altitude, but he was soon a black speck in the vapidsky.

Aaron wondered if the old Charizard kept himself going out of a sense of duty, to babysit Aaron until he felt like he could leave his master's charge and follow him when he could stand on his own two feet.

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. A weight descended upon him, as if he had run twenty miles without stopping and grabbed a yoke on the tenth. But he was cheered by the outcome of the day's events.

That Riolu, he thought as he started walking, was a most unusual creature indeed. Most Pokémon young were wary of humans. Either that or blindingly blasé about them. The Riolu had been neither. He had not feared approaching Aaron, but had made no move to touch him, as many of the latter type of Pokémon—the overly friendly and curious ones—might have. But more than anything he had found their auras interesting.

Like Aura Guardians, whose auras looked like blue flame on the aura's plane, the Lucario family had displayed similar energies. More than that, those energies had been charged with _emotion_. Granted, it had been a highly emotional situation, so that would have been the case anyway. But after the dust of battle had cleared, the high emotion had remained. But it was a layered, complex thing, more like what human emotions felt like through the Aura as opposed to the more primal, simple emotions of the average Pokémon.

He had to check his records again, but he was sure that there was a correlation between complex emotions and intelligence was a positive one…not to mention the fact that the mother had actually spoken to him directly.

It was a refreshing, to hear something so direct and sincere.

* * *

"_We're leaving?"_

"_Yes."_

"_It's fall!" _You'll never make it, he wanted to say. Frost was already silvering the fading leaves and ice churned in the swirling mountain streams as thick as blood. Fall was a short window of time to prepare for the bitter cold afforded by the mountains when the snows would come with their cold winds, ready to snuff out candles of life.

"_Those mad humans are expanding into the forest as we speak! Listen! Listen to the woods!" _she growled. Her antennae were quivering. No, every inch of her body was quivering. She smelled like fear, and anger.

But the Riolu couldn't hear.

"_Not with your ears!" _his mother growled in frustration. _"With these!" _she batted at his sensors. Riolu squeezed his eyes shut and tried. His antanae twitched. Little raindrops of motion, of frustration pattered on his senses. The world was dark, with thin little lines of light tracing their way onto it and then vanishing, like glow worms on a cave wall.

"_Mother…I don't think I can yet."_

His mother was staring at him, a fierce burning in her eyes that he couldn't place. If he had not known better, he might say it looked…desperate. But mother was never desperate. Sometimes scared, sometimes angry, sometimes sad, but never desperate.

She always knew what to do.

Her shoulders finally sagged, as if her bones had turned to water, or her muscles to stone. _"I know, my son."_

A flock of screaming Skarmory wailed across the sky above them.

"_Why, why?" _they were shrieking. _"Those fools! Fools!"_

For a moment Riolu thought they were talking about them. But then he remembered the humans. He had seen their axes biting into the flesh of the trees, and heard their cries and grunts and curses as their breath fogged in front of their faces when he had last visited the Houndour.

The Houndour had not understood. He was only sad because he knew that some people were going to die.

Riolu wondered if that last visit two days ago was the last time he was going to see him.

"_Come, my son," _Mother said at last. _"We must travel while there is still sun."_

Riolu felt something cold and sharp claw at his guts. This was their territory. He knew the rocks, the trees and the rivers. He knew their canyons and where to find food. He knew where the hadite crystals were, and the best places to watch the human village at night and during the day. He knew the Pokémon, like the family of Raticate, or the whispering Feebas in the streams, or the growling Rhyhorns that stomped around in the canyons. Even the Noctowl, and the meaner ones he remembered with a flash of warmth. And then there was the Houndour. And Big Brother and Little Mei…

His mother tugged gently at his paw.

"_Our den is—was close to their path. We cannot wait."_

"_Where are we going, Mother?" _The Riolu's voice was small. He had wanted to learn more about that human who could use the waves. He had wanted to actually step into the human village, and play with the human children more. He wanted to see his mother happy, after introducing her to them.

He thought he might _evolve_ here.

"_We are going to the base of the World Tree. Come."_

He went.

Even as they ran, he felt something warm behind his eyes. Not wanting Mother to see them and be sad too, he swallowed them, and tried not to think of human hands.

While most Pokémon save hardy ice types were conserving their energy, sleeping when they could, foraging in little snatches and relying on their fat reserves from the autumn, the Riolu and his mother were running almost nonstop from dawn to dusk each day, pausing briefly when they could to scrape up some nourishment from the tasteless, fibrous plants that grew through the winter or digging some of the iron-rich ore out of the nearly frozen ground to lick. But it wasn't nearly enough. The spike-buds on the Riolu's paws were tender to the touch despite the scraps of mineral ore they managed to lick from the surrounding stones. They simply did not have enough time nor energy to find a proper cave or quarry to get it from, and the danger posed by the aggressive stone-eaters like Lairon or Aggron was not worth an encounter. The Riolu's endurance, though usually high, began to dwindle when on the fourth day of their journey, the snows started to fall.

His mother, as though she was made of iron forded the snows, occasionally even carrying Riolu when he could run no further. There was no walking. The Riolu tried not to cringe when she pressed him against her chest, trying to ignore how frighteningly fast she seemed to thin. He could scarcely imagine what it would have been like if she had been able to run properly.

The forests were heavy with hushed weariness of winter, and hope for the spring. The few other Pokémon they saw were aggressive and clannish.

"_Go back,"_ they growled. _"There's no food here."_

"_In the caves made by the Tree's roots, there are deep, clear streams. The ground there is rich with iron, plenty for even the hungriest Aggron to eat and plenty for us too. There is no need to fight for it there." _Mother told him one night as they lay curled tightly together in the small dip of earth just beneath the lip of a huge boulder. Outside, a snowstorm hissed and clawed. It was easier to forget about it, though, while he and his mother tore into a warm Pidgey carcass and their collective body heat made the little ditch comfortable, almost safe.

"_Mother," _theRiolu asked, licking every drop of the Pidgey's hot sweet blood off his muzzle. _"How do you know these things?"_

The dam sighed in a manner that almost seemed contented and nuzzled the top of his head.

But again, she didn't answer.

What nearly killed them was the river.

They could see the Tree. It had been big even at a distance, but now they were practically in its shadows, looming so far up in the Riolu' sight it almost seemed to be growing out of the sky, an effect helped by a chalky, bloodless sky that turned everything taller than a bush hazy and undefined.

They were so close, now. Huge clumps of hadite, common throughout the entire area glowed blue and warm, like a summer sky warmed by the sun, growing in huge clumps on the other side of the river. Beneath its silvered surface, the Riolu could see a sluggishly frothing white current. It was like the Beedril forming inside the Kakuna, struggling to get out and test its new power but contained by a thin, if hard, shell.

Mother tested the edge of the ice tentatively. It held under the pressure of her paw. She leaned her weight on it. The Riolu, feeling his mouth dry up, thought he heard cracks in the ice. But his mother didn't move. She closed her eyes, antennae quivering. She could only manage it for a few seconds. She opened her eyes, a determined set to her jaw before she told the Riolu it was time to cross.

They were almost to the edge when the ice beneath his mother wrenched apart. There was a brittle snap. Before his dam could move, she had plunged into the black water like a stone. The Riolu felt a terror grip him by the throat as the broken blocks of ice sought to plug up the hole in the eyes, trying to push his mother down—

Her head broke the surface. Paws flailing, she fought the ice with the heat of desperation setting her eyes and energies on fire. It was nearly as frightening as the situation itself. She gasped out one word:

"_Run!"_

The cracks in the ice were webbing out like the fingers of grim death. The Riolu crouched down, as though he was being pulled to the ice by a giant claw. What should he do? What _could _he do? He couldn't just leave her!

"_Mother…"_

"_Go!" _the command was harsh, burbled. Her strength was failing. And what was he doing?

The natural thing would have been to cower around the site, watching desperately as the mother drowned, or running away as the mother would have asked. That is how most Pokémon would react. How most _humans_ would react, especially if they barely had the strength to keep themselves going.

The Riolu stopped thinking. He scrabbled to the other side and dove into the snow, flinging it back with his small paws. There must be something, anything that could help—something long and sturdy. He cut himself on something. Without flinching, he seized whatever it was. It pulled free of the snow with a frozen, sticky crack. It was twisty and blackened with the cold, just barely long enough to reach the crack in the ice where his mother was.

He crawled back onto the ice, holding the branch out awkwardly in front of him. His mother thrashed in the water, hesitating a single moment as the stick came her way. In retrospect, the Riolu might have thought she looked _confused._

"_Grab it!" _he cried.

The moment was broken. Either instinct or the knowledge her son wasn't going anywhere without her, she grabbed the branch.

The Riolu felt a lurch as his mother's added weight and the current pulled insistently at him. A stubborn sort of desperation and maybe the fire had raced through his veins and powered his little heart to practically a hundred beats per second seemed to be the deciding factor. One minute, he was nearly being pulled in, and the next minute, they were on the bank, gasping for air.

Later, the Riolu would realize that what he'd done was unusual. Making and using "tools" was not unheard of. But its implications were grand indeed.

He dragged his mother to a dry, abandoned little den at the hadite-studded base of a mighty old tree. He could scarcely believe their luck. It had frightened him then, his mother shivering like a little flame in a windstorm, rattling so had that her teeth clacked together and scraped her tongue till she had a cold, bloody froth on her lips. He had draped his warm little body over her torso and hugged it tightly, listening to every heartbeat and willing the next one each individually to come and keep going.


	3. Blind

_A/N:_ _I must also apologize for the sheer amount of time this has taken. Due to crazy college student life and life in general, my beta was not able to get this chapter back to me for a while._

_Drop a review if you feel so compelled. They are like cookies for we writers. Thank you, Windy Rain, Luiz 4200, yamina-chan and our Anonymous friend (As well as all you silent readers. Your support is felt, if not heard!) 3 You guys are the reason I post._

They did not live inside the Tree. Lucario were creatures of open air, rough stone and sunlight. Living around the Tree, with its smooth, strong waves so powerful that even he, Riolu could sense it as if he were touching it, felt almost like an embrace. A warm embrace, protecting, but on the outside harder than stone and just as harsh.

They wasted to time locating a place to call home, and to the Riolu's infinite relief, there were so many small caves and so much space the task proved an easy one. Mother chose a roomy den that appeared like it had been dug out by another of their kind, long ago. It was situated halfway up a small bluff covered almost entirely in shining hadite, overlooked by a large, knotty oak on a boulder strewn foothill of the Tree. Even from here, they could hear the river hushing the surrounding mountain forest on its way down the slope. Inside the cave was warm and smooth, lit dimly by smaller clusters of hadite that grew along the ceiling like flowers.

There was a wildness to the feel of the stone here, a quick, calm smell to the air and the plants and crystals, each brimming with warm energy that whispered in the blood—a reassurance of home. _This is where you belong,_ it seemed to say.

The locals, on the other hand, were a consistent reminder of their alien status, especially when more of them were out and about by spring. They were far less likely to engage in conversation, generally absorbed in whatever task at hand, such as gathering food.

_"I have never seen that plant before. What is it?" _the Riolu had ventured from their new home to explore a little bit. Mother was resting—something she had been doing more and more of these days. She had never seemed to recover all her strength after their close encounter with death in the frozen river—before she prepared to go and forage herself. The Riolu intended to familiarize himself with the area, but also bring back something for her. But foraging, while something he wasn't new at, got a whole lot more complicated when many of plants were different, and after just arriving it just seemed like bad form to kill one of the locals for food. Where he got that idea he wasn't too sure, but thinking about it made a wave of nostalgia for _home_, so he stopped.

The Nidorino who he was talking to didn't even look up from his meal of brambly grasses.

_"They are good to eat,"_ the Nidorino said. The Riolu titled his head. Clearly they were good to eat, even if they didn't look that tasty.

_"I can see that…" _he said. _"Okay. You see, I know this starflower is good to eat." _he held indicated to the buds of a flowering plant. _"But this one," _he pointed to another one. It looked very much like the starflower. It could have in fact, been a starflower, but there was a tiny bead of yellow on the third petal. It even smelled like a starflower. _"Is this also a starflower?"_

The Nidorino sniffed it and snorted. _"This one is also good to eat."_

Riolu sighed. He had a feeling he wasn't going to get through to this guy. Even the Ryhorns at home hadn't been so…simple. He felt bad for thinking it, he couldn't help it. _"Sorry for bothering you_." He plucked several of the flowers and started to walk away.

_"You talk a lot," _the Nidorino grunted.

About halfway back to their new home, Riolu felt hungry and popped one of the strange starflowers in his mouth. The instant it touched his mouth, his tongue tingled suspiciously and a bitter taste exploded.

_Poison_.

Terrified, he spat it out and ran to the nearest stream he could find. He washed his mouth and scraped the rest of the plant's residue from his tongue by rasping it over a rough stone. At first, he was angry at the Nidorino. But after a few moments thinking about it, he remembered that the Nidoran breed had poison in their blood and in their spikes. Of course it would not bother them.

He cursed himself for a fool and started off back home. He had not taken more than four steps when a light flashed behind him, accompanied by noise that sounded like blinking—if blinking ever had a sound—that sent his heart shooting straight into his throat. Someone was laughing, but there was no sound. It was an ugly laugh, like claws scraping on stone. He froze, trying to hear where the blinking sound was coming from. He could feel waves of energy, his antennae were quaking instinctively, trying to find the source. He found himself turning in circles. The source of the waves was always somewhere just beyond his ability to feel them clearly. The laughing continued, rising in pitch.

_I see you_. The cackler seemed to speak. Like the way his mother had spoken to that human, in his mind.

The blink occurred right behind him. The Riolu didn't even turn; the feeling of a great, heavy presence standing right behind him as it cackled was enough to send him crashing through the undergrowth for home, too scared to look back.

_"My son, what happened?"_ Mother asked. Riolu was sure that he looked a fright, scratched and bruised from his flight. He lay the good plants he had collected on the way there—true starflowers—in front of his mother, trying to catch his breath. After recounting his experience, his mother nibbled one of the flowers.

_"I meant to talk to you about it, but you were gone this morning before I woke up. The Skarmory Mother warned me of an old Kadabra who lives by the stream. They say she's quite mad, but harmless. Do not be frightened."_

Everyone is either mad or stupid around here, the Riolu thought crossly. He immediately regretted the thought. They couldn't help it. They hadn't grown up—this sudden realization chilled him a little—grown up around humans.

There was a little spark of despair that flowered in the pit of his chest. He was a Pokémon. A _Pokémon._ And yet, surrounded by others who had never seen nor heard of human hands, far away, he felt more alone and alienated than ever.

He was changed in a way that couldn't be changed.

The wind blew gently outside. _You belong here_, it whispered.

No, thought Riolu, curling up into a little ball away from his mother. I don't know if I do anymore.

After several moons of failed attempts to get to know the locals better as he had back at home, the Riolu gave up. There were few types that were interested in any kind of relationship past knowing that one existed. Oh, there were a few, like the Dratini breed or the Swinub, but they were mostly interested in keeping to themselves. What is wrong with me, the Riolu would seethe, unable to work out his feelings. Is what I'm feeling simply not natural? Not normal?

Part of him told him he was being ridiculous, that he might be the same if there were others of his own kind around. But there weren't. So that part of him retreated inside, like a tumor—unnatural, unwanted, and painful. But the pain was one that was dull, and easily ignorable.

After all, did he really need a companionable relationship with anyone? Even memories of the Houndour and the children and even that mean Noctowl were shoved into the little tumor, to be brought up and sifted through only in dreams. He didn't need them to survive. And he could survive just fine.

What is the point of mere survival? Part of him screamed. He learned to ignore that too, but it was much like ignoring hunger, or pain. One could try and convince oneself that it failed to be bothersome. Even if it did.

His mother noticed her son was retreating into himself. He spoke less, but he seemed much more eager to start learning about his own abilities, how to sense the waves in all things, how to fight. She was not sure whether to be sad or relieved at this change in behavior. It was with a little bit of both that she taught him the rest of the skills he needed to survive on his own. The time was nearing after all, despite the fact he had not yet _changed_.

She feared, though, that he may never change. Lucario changed when content. And for all his progress, her son never really seemed happy anymore. In fact, he had not seemed happy since they left the human village. Sometimes she wondered if she made the right choice.

He was a quick learner. He had always been. It wasn't long before he could bring down Pidgeys without her help, or how to find water when there appeared to be none. But most importantly, he had almost mastered the ability to sense waves as much as he possibly could while he was a Riolu. Now he could sense her presence from hundreds of jumps away. He obviously could notsee waves, like his mother said she could sometimes.

Attacking with waves was a lot harder. He failed to do it yet. But now, he often found himself seeking out places in isolation, trying to see if he could make any waves that were better than the ones he'd tried to attack that Hariyama with. It felt like a lifetime ago. And the deadness he had nurtured in himself allowed him to live with that fact.

One summer day, though, the stagnation that had set in was washed away as if by a powerful current. That day, even the breeze was warm, gently tugging at the short grasses and tough leaves. The mountainside was set in the music of hissing leaves and the lazy buzzing of Yamna and Ladyba buzzing amidst small, colorful open flowers.

A flock of Pidgey screamed overhead.

_"A man, a man, a man in the canyon!" _they screamed.

Riolu, sitting sedately on a boulder, snapped his eyes open. A man? A human? This far out in the mountains? It didn't matter. He had to see.

He reached the canyon in time to see the human. He was flying low on the back of a mighty Pidgeot. When they landed in a puff of dust, the man dismounted, but not before stroking the neck feathers of the bird in what looked like appreciation before the Pokémon chirped an affirmative and flapped off.

He was carrying a tall staff with a piece of rounded hadite mounted on its head. He adjusted his odd-looking head covering and stared up at the Tree before pulling out a piece of….paper, if his memory served him right, and a drawing stick.

The Riolu could scarcely contain his excitement. But there was also a little flicker of wonder: something about this human's waves seemed remarkably was impossible to place, though. But he had to wonder, what was this man doing here? He found himself scrambling down the bluff, trying to get close.

He could not, after all, attempt what he was going to attempt from that far off.

He crept within barely a length of his own body from the human, hiding behind a large chunk of hadite.

The human, not looking up from his paper, smiled.

"You can come out, you know."

The Riolu cringed in surprise. Humans had lousy senses. But he had a lot of questions he really wanted to ask. Swallowing nervously, he crept out from behind the crystal and thought, _really _hard. He tried to picture the waves carrying his thoughts.

_How did he know I was here?_

A flash of surprise swept across the human's face. He frowned a little, and then stowed his paper back into a leather carrying pouch he had hidden under his long, billowy piece of clothing—a cloak, was it? He knelt down beside in front of the Riolu. The Riolu's heart lifted. It felt like there was a flower opening up inside it, like light was spreading from the center of his chest to his claw tips. It was a feeling he barely recognized anymore.

He had actually spoken to a human, and the human understood.

He was _happy._

"I could tell by your Aura," the human said. If he was surprised, he hid had an easy, open face and blue eyes. Blue eyes that were so familiar it ached that the Riolu could notremember…wait, aura?

Was this the human who saved him and his mother?

But wait…

_What's Aura?_

"Aura is the essence, the energy within all things. It's with the rocks, the trees, the water, and this great Tree," he gestured to the mountain, "but it is also with all Pokémon and all humans. Not everyone can see or use them, though."

The Riolu frowned. Aura. He could not see Aura. But if it was an energy given off by all things…

_Is Aura like waves?_

The human smiled. "You could say that, yes. Everything emanates waves of Aura. You have incredible waves. More so than any species of Pokémon I've ever seen."

_Really?_

The human nodded. The Riolu rocked side to side excitedly. He wasn't sure which question to ask first. He thought he might start with the simple ones. "Why are you here?"

He said that he was here on a "pilgrimage" to see what he called the Tree of Beginning. It was part of a "rite of passage" he had to undergo in order to be a true Aura Guardian, who, as the Riolu asked, turned out to be an order of warriors who defended the balance of Aura and protected their land and king, all while striving to understand the Aura in human and Pokémon alike. It sounded like a grand purpose to the Riolu, something to be excited about and look forward to every day.

_Are there many of you?_

The human made a strange expression, like a crooked little half-smile. But it wasn't a happy one, which made it confusing.

"I am the last. But it's good incentive that I always do my best."

The Riolu frowned.

_But aren't you lonely?_

The human hesitated. It was only after several heavy heartbeats that he opened his mouth to answer, but suddenly sat up straight as if he'd been shocked. He closed his eyes for a moment. The Riolu copied him, out of what instinct he wasn't sure. His antennae tingled uncomfortably. There was something here. Something—

The explosion beneath their feet might have killed them, but the human threw himself forward and in a single motion grabbed the Riolu against his chest and rolled away.

A huge, blocky shape, made indistinct by the cloud of chalky groaned like an oak slowly snapping in yellow lights flashed in geometric formations, accompanied by a high, tinny sound..

The Riolu's mouth went dry. One of the three guardians of the Tree, almost as ancient as Mew itself, but mindless in their fervor to protect it against man.

They would kill the human.

_Run away! _The Riolu barked at the man.

_"LEAVE THIS PLACE." _A hyper-orange beam of light tore the mask of smoke away, revealing the rough, grimy ivory and burnt orange of Regirock's body.

Aaron leapt to his feet and hurled the end of the staff out in front of him. An iridescent blue bubble of what could only be Aura sprang between the beam and Aaron, but the force of the attack still sent him hurling backwards and crashing into a rock.

_Run!_

_"LEAVE THIS PLACE OR DIE."_

The human once again seemed to hesitate. He glanced at the Riolu, who in hopes of getting the human to retreat dove behind a cluster of hadite. Aaron took the hint and twirled his staff. A screaming shadow of a Pidgeot hurled itself down from the sky like a bolt of lightning. Aaron hopped up onto its back deftly and was soon a tiny dot, circling high above in the sky.

The Riolu might have watched him, but the tremors of the shaking ground and the sound of Regirock's stomping back towards the recesses of the Tree yanked him back to an anger and disappointment he barely understood. If only it had listened! Why couldn't it listen?

_"Why did you do that?" _he demanded while following the Regirock like a yappy Houndour pup. _"He didn't mean any harm! He didn't attack me or hurt anything!"_

The Regirock did not even turn to acknowledge him. Abruptly, it launched itself into a frenzy of spinning and buried itself back into the earth. The rocks growled at its passage, and then fell silent.

The Riolu stared at the hole the Regirock made. Blind guardians. He sighed through his nose, before noticing there was a tingling in his antennae. He glanced back up at the sky. Aaron still made lazy circles around the scene on his Pidgeot's back from the sky. The sight somehow chased away the Riolu's irritation. A vaguely unfamiliar, alien expression touched across his face. He was smiling.

He almost waved, but Aaron seemed to think it was appropriate to go. He wheeled the Pidgeot and disappeared into the depths of the clear blue sky.

The Riolu climbed up on a rock and watched him until he vanished completely from sight. It felt like the Regirock had only cut the meeting short, not ended it completely. The Riolu had an odd sense of continuation to follow, even if it was nothing beyond his own wishes for the future, the knowledge did little to affect him. He barely noticed the hammering of his own heart, until the hot white light had suffused his entire body.

It was too quick for him to be shocked. His body lengthened and stretched as if something inside him had grown so to stretch his skin, too fast for him to even register until it was over. He had changed.

He had _evolved._

The Lucario found himself wandering around the spot where he had evolved. And the Aura—instead of ripples bouncing against his consciousness, they were true waves, trying to communicate information that he had yet to know how to read. His antennae twitched. He closed his eyes.

It was like blinking. For one instant, the darkness revealed another world, a world where everything was suspended in darkness and blue shapes, indistinct as flame glittered like smeared starlight. He opened his eyes. What did it mean?

What did it mean for him now, now that he had gone from Riolu to Lucario?

He went home, testing the limits of his new strength and feeling joy as a result, but he could notshake the feeling that he was balanced precariously on the edge of a huge precipice, and that rushing up behind him was a gust of wind.

Spring had always sung of life. But springs around the Tree of Beginning were often what had to be the grandest and brightest of beginnings the world over. Hundreds of new, vivid flowers pushing up out of the thawing scentless earth, lending the air a humming smell of honey and young grass. Baby Pokémon and their mothers tumbled around in the brightening fields to the crystalline song of the smaller birds. Even the fish seemed to splash and shimmy in the newly warming waters of thawed streams and rivers. Everyone was singing some kind of primal, ancient song.

The Lucario's song was one of despair.

He was trying to coax his mother to drink some water dripping off the end of a piece of moss he'd soaked in the stream. She could barely lift her head now.

She had missed her second heat in the fall. Her second heat. Lucario females usually had four heats in their lifetimes, and now that her son was grown, she was due for her second. Even if there were no other males in the area she should have at least given off a weak pheromone. But she had not. She had been weaker ever since the river, and after her son had evolved, she had only gotten weaker. Her body was wasted and thin. The sight of her made something in the Lucario cry out: she was so young, she wasn't even at the half-way point in her life! And now, she could barely drink water. She had hardly moved for days.

Her breathing was very strange. For minutes she would pant like she had been running, and then most of the time, she'd only breathe very occasionally, very shallowly. Her heart beat was erratic, like a frightened Pidgey with a broken wing being approached by a predator. It would flutter, pause, and flutter again futilely.

Sometimes he would try to talk to her, comfort her when it seems like there was nothing he could do. He'd ask if she was comfortable, in pain, if there was anything he could do. She would always change the subject back to him.

_I have lived a full life. I have raised a pup to adulthood, and you are strong and wise. You will survive, and survive well. Do not mourn me. My spirit will go into the stones of this place, and my voice will echo in the waves forever._

After that, she wouldn't speak much. Her thoughts wandered strangely, and after a while, they would not travel further than her own body, for he was no longer able to hear. Or maybe she just wasn't talking any more.

And this soaking moss thing wasn't working. It wasn't enough. A rational part of him told him that nothing was enough, but he ignored it.

_Mother, I am going to bring you some water. Please hold on._

With an energy born of desperation, he bolted from the cave. He must be quick. There was a big boulder not too far from where they lived. He was yet unable to throw aura like his mother, but he was able to send a least pulses into the stone and break a piece off. Roughly, crudely, he hacked at the rock with his spikes until it was a little concave, better for holding water than any leaf or moss. He then flew to the stream. His paws barely seemed to touch the ground.

He crashed though the undergrowth and staggered to a halt.

Lying on the bank was a Kadabra. That was odd in it of itself, for Kadabra were rarely found in woody, wild areas. She was lying prone on her belly. She smelled nothing like a living like decaying leaves—in spring—and dust. Her hide so dull and sides so still she appeared dead. The Lucario hesitated for a heartbeat, stepped around her and plunged his makeshift bowl into the water. Her waves—Aura—were so weak that it was almost the same as the trees that surrounded them.

The Kadabra's eyes snapped open at the sound of the splash. They glowed a harsh red. With a hiss, she reared violently back up to her feet and reached out with a gnarled claw in his direction. The Lucario felt his body seize up, as if his blood itself had stopped and stiffened and a strange film had wrapped itself around his mind. He was completely paralyzed. An invisible force lifted him slightly off the ground—the bowl, still full of water floated right in front of him.

_Let go! _Good, at least he wasn't mute.

The Kadabra's "voice" in his mind sounded weirdly detached and loud. _You made this? _She gestured the bowl closer to her and spun it around in a little circle. _You are the one who made this?_

The Lucario struggled and repeated himself. With a seemingly careless motion, the Kababra flicked her wrist. He flew across the stream and crashed painfully into a tree, sliding to the ground in a heap.

She's not harmless at all, he thought angrily, remembering his encounter with the mad Kababra a few years ago. Belatedly, he noticed that in her right hand she was two tarnished silver instrument. Her eyes still had that sickly red glow. Her eyes followed to motion of the bowl in a twitchy manner that sent an involuntary shudder down his spine.

_Give that back!_

Effortlessly she shoved him back against the tree.

_Wild Pokémon do not make tools. They do not speak, either, like you do. You do not belong here. Go back. _Her words were monotone, harsh and fast. Like raindrops, mindless, identical and swift. _How is it you learned to speak?_

Her mental voice took on a curious note. The sudden emotion was a little jarring, and her eyes stopped glowing. The Lucario was unsure of how he was going to get out of this. He didn't have time for this, and she was obviously completely mad. Reason wasn't going to help him—

It felt suddenly as if his mind were a book, and someone was rapidly sifting through the pages, tugging, shifting, skimming. Memories long buried flashed in his mind's eye as fast as blinking.

_Stop that! _He felt _violated_. It was a unique moment: He would not have considered himself a private creature, but that was because he had never before had to disclose anything to anyone. Now his memories and thoughts were being dragged out of him forcefully, and he felt like he was going to throw up.

Something snapped. The hand turning the pages seemed to break into a million pieces and vanish from his mind. The vice-like grip that had encased him slackened. Even so, he found his muscles weak as rotten wood. He struggled to lift his head.

_You are strong._ The Kadabra's eyes were glowing again. She continued to twirl t he bowl. The Lucario willed strength back into his body, furious at his inability to move with any kind of purpose. _And yet you are afraid of your power._

_What power are you talking about?_

_Your knowledge! _The Kadabra snapped. _Your knowledge! You've been changed forever by the hand of man, and you cannot change back. Go. You do not belong here._

With the last statement, she jerked her clawed hand at him. Belatedly, the Lucario caught a glimpse of something shiny. Three battered metal bracelets clanked along her thin wrist. He narrowed his eyes.

_Neither do you._

The Kadabra blinked as if in surprise and let out that dry, mental cackle. _I died years ago. And yet you could live and would live hundreds of years if you left this place. Live! Merely surviving is death to ones such as you and I._

Her words were making his head hurt. She was babbling. Normal Pokémon did not live hundreds of years. Least of all his kind. He tested his limbs. The shock of whatever she had done to him was wearing off.

_I will fight you. Give back the bowl._

_Your mother will not last. I have seen her in your mind. Poor little child, so young, so unfortunate. So special, to bear one such as you. She will not last long at all. Not long. There is nothing for you here. Begone._

With a growl, the Lucario leaped across the stream, paws outstretched for battle. But a heartbeat before he would have collided into the old Kadabra, she disappeared in a flash of light. He landed where she had stood moments ago. The bowl fell to the ground behind him with a thud and the dull slosh of spilling water.

Hackles bristling like pine needles the Lucario whipped around. This time, there was no more blinking or flashing. That dead scent was gone. And even though the effects of her attacks were gone, why did it feel like someone had reached into his guts and shaken his heart? His limbs felt like they were full of dust, dry, heavy, cold.

He shook his head violently and stumbled to the bank to refill the bowl. What that crazy old creature had to say didn't matter.

Pokémon, except the Old Ones, do not live hundreds of years.

But _wasn't _he changed? He thought of the man, his evolution. He felt the heavy stone bowl in his paws.

He didn't have time for this.

He refilled the bowl and fled back home. The speed of his retreat kicked up several small, smooth pebbles. With silver _plink_ they plunged into the river, marking their passage with ripples that ghosted across the surface before melting out into the current in a heartbeat's time.

His mother died during the night.

She had been unable to take any water in her final hours despite his coaxing. She'd stirred feebly and mumbled soft, snuffling words that sounded more like breath. The new dawn found her body silent and empty. She didn't smell like his mother anymore. Her scent, warm and comforting like sunlight on his back, was overlaid with the cold, stone smell of death. She appeared so small, and her eyes, half-open were like dull river pebbles.

Grief was the feeling of having all one's guts pulled out of, leaving one hollow as a dead tree with rotten bark. It was the feeling when one's nose went numb, and the flesh around the eyes and spikes trembled like naked baby skin. It was an alien feeling, where you felt something warm and hard and heavy congealing at the back of your throat and pushing at the backs of dry eyes.

He stared at her for a long time, first with his eyes, and then with his Aura, unseeing. He knew she was not there anymore.

When he felt like he could draw breath again—had he been holding it—his first, disturbingly alien thought was to close her eyes for her and perhaps bury her. He remembered watching the humans do that. He had been with the Houndour. It had been a damp, blue morning in the early fall one year. The air had been heavy, like moist earth was filling his nose and ears. They had watched a procession. Two males were digging at the earth, while a gathering of humans wearing dark clothes like stormclouds stood solemn and silent like dead trees. A few females were wailing, thin, cold, anguished sounds that yanked around the then-Riolu's warm heart. One of the males, dressed in heavy robes and holding a book spoke solemnly as other men helped lower the body into the ground and cover it back up with earth.

_"Why do they do that?"_ the Riolu had asked. He saw a stone, round and gray, marking the freshly turned earth where the dead human lay.

The Houndour shrugged. _"This is how the humans honor their dead loved ones."_

But his mother was not a human, neither attached nor changed by the human world.

He touched noses one last time to the shell that had once housed his mother's spirit. And then he turned, and padded out of the cave.


	4. Seekers

In his dreams, the Riolu is searching for someone. Something hot and blue flickers on the edge of his perception, a lurid, liquid glow in the cloying dark.

_Who are you?_

He was not speaking with his voice. The light shivered like a disturbed reflection. A rising wave of panic welled up in the Riolu's guts. He tried to walk, but even though he could see, something told him he was blind as dreams are wont to do. He stumbled forward. His paws seemed suctioned to the invisible ground, as if he was running—oh so slowly—through cold mud.

_Who are you? _His cry seemed to rise in pitch.

The light winked out.

_Wait!_

The ground beneath him gave way. His guts seemed to drop away as he hung, suspended in black before an invisible hand pushed up under his belly and flung him upwards. The higher he rose, the faster he seemed to rise, falling upwards so fast until he could feel himself spinning.

_Who are you?_ He cried, his words echoing oddly in his head. He closed his eyes, but the darkness was the same. Pinprinks of blue stars whirled behind his eyelids. Sick, he wished for it to stop, wished for it to stop more than anything…

It stopped. The ground seemed to materialize once more. He landed on his belly with a grunt as the vertigo dribbled out of his head like water out of an ear. He found himself shivering. He hadn't opened his eyes, but he could see it.

A shimmering presence, different than the first one hovered off his nose. It had two huge glowing eyes set in a tiny pink face. It cocked its head in an almost quizzical fashion and uttered a soft mewing cry.

He knew this creature instinctively, but in his dream he could not remember Its name.

Something cold and sharp stabbed into his side, driving out the little breath in his lungs. The shining Pokémon winked out in a flash of rose colored light, but just as the world started to spin again, the blue one returned, bright, indistinct, tall.

_Who are you?_

And then Lucario woke up. The moment he opened his eyes, the dream dissipated like steam. All he could remember was empty loss, and the cold, naked feeling of being lost.

He was tired of waking up like this.

The moon had completed a full turn since the death of his mother. In those days he'd wandered the foothills of the World Tree like a haunt, staggering around in the night in huge, irregular circles. He knew where he was, but somehow it all seemed weird, and alien, like he'd never walked this place before. He did not hunt. He barely foraged and sucked nourishment from iron ore enough to keep himself alive. Somehow, he was just unable to muster the feelings of hunger or tiredness in himself. Sleeping was brief, fitful; plagued with dreams he could not remember yet was sure he had before.

And beneath his paws, the land throbbed.

_You belong here, you belong here._

This was a wonderful land. Plenty of food, space and peace for any Pokémon. Any number of Pokémon. Any number of happy, well-fed, content, _wild_ Pokémon, free to run, fly, swim, crawl and swim as they pleased.

_You belong here_.

He could not find a new den. He could barely bring himself to wander among the many vacant ones.

_You belong here._

Some days, he would be too tired to forage. It seemed simpler to just sleep, until the nightmare.

_You belong here._

He sometimes heard them, other Pokémon who watched him pass, with their simple thoughts:

"_He looks like he's sick."_

"_Don't Lucario bed down at night?"_

"_What is he looking for?"_

_You belong here_.

One morning, he woke and stretched. The backs of his front paws where his spikes hurt, as if the spike itself was so heavy it put a hideous pressure on the rest of the bones in his paws. He barely noticed his empty stomach, and how the light, even though it was barely dawn seemed too bright for his eyes.

It was then that he realized with a sort of sleepy detachment that if he stayed here, he would die.

And it was then, that a spike of panic lurched inside him.

He didn't _want_ to die. Not like this. Not alone. He sat up shakily, for the first time in a while registering how weak he was. What did he want?

His memory turned pages. The pages were sticky, and cracked, but they turned. He could remember little things: the view from that grassy knoll, the sound of warbling human voices, bells, the smell of the wild, dark woods blending with the blue cooking smoke from the village, the taste of the water, rich in minerals and silt—the flower-petal touch of the Little Sister's hand, warm, soft on his Riolu head.

He saw the Aura human, heard his oaky voice, flying on the Pidgeot's back into the blue.

The Kadabra's voice suddenly reverberated in his mind in that overly loud way that memory makes it:

_There is nothing for you here. Go back._

Of course. It was simple. It had always been simple. Maybe at his birthplace, he might discover a life beyond mere survival. His birthplace, brimming with the Aura of man. Where things that changed stayed changed forever.

But first he had to recover. It was a frustrating period—long summer days consciously spent eating properly and sleeping. When one did not think about them, they didn't seem to take as long. But now the Lucario was impatient with purpose, and had to force himself to relax and sleep on many an occasion.

Finally, that morning on late summer arrived. Fat silver stars still shuddered in the lightening purple of the sky, and everything in the shadow of the Tree of Beginning was still damp with night's dew. The sun was a thin line of gold rimming the mountains in the east.

The Lucario woke up alert. His muscles felt tight and tingling with purpose. A thin dawn breeze, feeling like rivulets of rainwater on his back drew a shudder from him. He sat up and took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Today, the earth was silent. Some part of him thought it seemed like it had accepted his departure. This was a wonderful sanctuary, a wonderful place. But now, it was time to go.

He started off at a run.

Underneath a storm-warning gray sky, the land seemed to flee from his feet. He was not sure _how_ exactly he knew where he was going, just that the further south he went, the quieter the beating of the earth in his veins seemed to get, the softer the insistence of belonging and quiet seemed to get. After all, humans were tumultuous, noisy creatures, in their way—

A low hanging branch tangled itself into his paws, sending him flying nose down into the dirt. With a snort, he pushed himself up, resolving to pay more attention. He started to run again, but he hadn't gone more than a few hundred jumps when he noticed a sad tendril of blue smoke drifting almost invisibly into the sky. Before the sight could register in his mind, a whooshing sigh of wind breathed death and smoke into his face.

He froze. A shudder pried down his spine with cold, needlelike claws, causing his fur to prickle and stand up. The smell was disturbing as it was sudden. Burned flesh and brackish blood, impossible to tell if it was human or Pokémon. It filled his senses, pressing down on any powers of perception he might have had—so much so that he did not notice the dead Absol.

He lurched back. The Absol's glassy red eyes were open, empty and imploring—if not for the cruel black arrow with a green strip of color tied to the base of the shaft that protruded from its forehead. The blood matting the Absol's cornsilk white fur was gummy and had the color of dead orchids. It hadn't been dead long…

The Lucario looked up. Squat buildings of wood and stone sagged as if the fire that burned them black made them too heavy to support themselves. If the bright, berry red blood puddling around the bodies of humans and Pokémon alike, the Absol was likely one of the earlier casualties. Some perverse hook seemed to draw him forward. It felt like it took most of his insides with him, leaving him feeling hollow, as if nothing but the smell of death and the sights of the bodies was filling him up as he walked among them. There were men, facedown in the dirt with bloody farm tools and Pokémon by their sides—a Houndour with his throat missing, a Tauros with a forest of arrows sticking out of his back, his tongue lolling and dripping blood…and the women clutching pale, bloodied babies in their arms, one with an Umbreon with a broken spear stabbed into its heart, its face forever frozen in a defiant snarl. Lucario noted with surprise that some of the younger females had missing clothes. One of them, broken over a trough of smoldering hay lay limp. There were still-wet tears on her cheeks. The dull surprise turned to cold horror when the Lucario passed and realized there was another scent lingering about these females: the smell of sex.

"_What?"_ he rasped, unable to keep the shock contained. This was…a unique sort of evil, one he'd never encountered in Pokémon. Pokémon could and did kill and ravage, he knew this. There were certainly lost Pokémon souls who had given themselves to that brand of madness, but to forcefully mate with a female not even in heat? He felt like his stomach had been replaced with smoldering embers and the smoke was rising from his guts and scalding his throat.

Petals of red flame lapped apathetically at what was left of a thatched roof before falling in with a crackly hiss. The Lucario trembled. This attack, this _disaster_, was unjust. It was only just that the perpetrators be _punished._

A desperate squeal caused him to leap back to his feet—since when had he been on his knees?—and fired all his senses to hyper-alert. Impulsively, he bounded in the direction of the sound, winding in, around and over several smoldering avenues of decimated houses, burned-out stables and corpses. He came at last to what might have been a barn of some sort. Ringing the now-derelict building were eleven Donphan. Bigger than any he'd seen before, each with bloody tusks, wearing greenish armor and each bearing a rider. The riders and the Donphan had armor and the blood-splatters in common. Unlike the Donphan, the riders were all male. Over their armor they were wearing tatty rags. Many had coverings on the lower halves of their faces, as if they were trying to hide them.

The one the Lucario instantly assumed to be the leader was broader in the shoulders than the others, with a shell of overbearing pressure that seemed to come off him in waves. His aura, when the Lucario attempted to see him on that plane, was dappled and had a mean, flickering look. His mount, if the pheromones were correct, was the matriarch. Old, scarred, massive, with a powerful look in her still-bright eyes. But she, at least, was silent. The human was grinning a mossy smile, showing brownish teeth as he ordered his mount to drag something out of the wreckage of the barn. The squeal sounded again.

It was a Phanpy, wailing miserably and digging its feet into the dirt to avoid being dragged. It was like someone trying to swim up a waterfall.

"Well, it's alive," the leader grunted, "Or are you going to fight for some master to the death like the rest of them?" the Phanpy trembled, unable to voice a response. "That's what I thought. Bring it along with the others."

At the mention of others, the Lucario glanced around. Just beyond the swarm of Donphan was a wagon of some kind, full of unconscious—the dead had clearly been left to rot—, mostly small-ish Pokémon and young human children. He whirled back to the Phanpy. The matriarch raised her tusks and trumpeted, readying to deliver a blow.

The Lucario couldn't watch any more.

With a roar, he leaped from his hiding place and smashed into the Phanpy, knocking it roughly from harm's way. Either the Phanpy was undersized or simply that unsteady on its feet Lucario wasn't sure, but he was grateful the tackle had worked. The Donphans started in surprise, opening a gap in the ring.

"What is that thing?"

"It's a—a—Lucario?"

"Can't be…"

"_Run!"_ the Lucario shouted at the Phanpy. _"Escape while you have the chance!"_

The Phanpy didn't need a third warning. It turned and fled, crashing away into the undergrowth. But now the Lucario found himself in a tricky situation. He dimly remembered his mother warning him that Pokémon like Donphan, Rhyhorn, Sandslash—things that used the earth in fights were particularly dangerous to him. However, her warning seemed pale, immaterial, and unimportant as waves of crackling energy seemed to rise in him and make him tremble with rage.

_Why? Why did you do this?_

"You can speak?" the leader, whom the Lucario had expected to be angry—brutish, big things were typically easy to anger—now only wore a slight smirk on his face. "And to think I assumed only the Psychics and Ghosts could do such. Are you a Pokémon of Rota? Evariste? Who do you fight for?"

Who did he fight for?

He certainly didn't feel like he was fighting for himself, but then who else? For what else?

The leader seemed to take his hesitation for an answer. He laughed. The Lucario's ears twitched. It was like if deep pits in the earth could laugh. Or if stinking, bubling swamps could laugh—an ugly, muddy brown sound that made him grit his teeth.

The Lucario melted into a battle stance.

_Why did you do this? Answer me!_

The leader's tone changed, as though we was a teacher trying to explain something difficult to someone very stupid. "This, my friend, is called war. It brings two things: death, and glory."

_Glory?_ It was a word rarely used by Pokémon. The Lucario snarled._ What about the dead children? The females you—you— _there wasn't a word for it,_ That isn't just death, it's…_he had to think for an appropriate word…_torture._

This actually made the men chuckle. The Lucario felt blood suffusing his ears. The leader stepped forward on his Donphan. "I'm truly amazed. Shouldn't you know this? Who is your master, who would keep you so woefully ignorant?"

_I am…_

The leader inferred the rest. "You're a wild, purposeless beast then. Shall I give you a purpose, wild one?" The Donphan matriarch reared as if on cue.

The Lucario flinched as if stung.

"_It is a challenge, pup,"_ the matriarch trumpeted.

The rider smirked and wiped drying blood from his face with a gauntleted hand. "Don't worry. War is a very, very human thing. You'll get used to it."

The Donphan charged.

Time slowed down, as though it was running in water. War is a _very _human thing? But—his memories of Little Mei's chubby, petal-soft child hands patting his Riolu head, Big Brother carrying her on his back when they played together, the laughter of mated couples as they walked hand and hand, their tears of _grief_ as they mourned a loved one, the gentle, oak-tree voice of that man of Aura, _all of them smiling, laughing, crying…_

_You're WRONG! _It was over in seconds, but they seemed surrealistically slow, as if time itself had been stretched like drying tree sap. The Lucario leaped over the Donphan's head directly at the face of the leader. With a roar, he smacked his paw spike directly across the man's face. He stuck something firm and squishy like a sour plum, a spray of hot blood hit him in the check as a screech of pain split the smoky air.

The whoosh of arrows narrowly missing—no, one clipped the back of his neck—

He landed on the ground outside the ring of Donphan, ignoring the trickle of blood down his back. The leader had mastered his pain. He clutched a grimy fist to the pulpy dark mess where his eye had been.

"_Bring it to me," _he ground out. A trickle of saliva frothed from his lips as he groped for something on his back.

The Donphan and their riders moved as one. A collective roar shook the air while the thunder of pounding Donphan feet rattled the soil. The Lucario, for one mad moment considered standing his ground. The second moment's thought saved him though. Ten angry Donphan plus their men, no—_killers—_with arrows against one Lucario who couldn't even throw Aura?

He wasn't ready to die, yet.

The Lucario turned and fled. The Donphan were fast and vocal. He could almost feel their hot breath on his tail, and the sound of the arrows whizzing by his head made his ears_hurt_. He bounded up the steep bluff just as the first thunderclap sounded. A spattering of raindrops landed on his nose. It was a prelude to the deluge that followed. A snap of lightning, and it seemed as if even the sky had been torn open that day; rain poured out like hysterical tears, and the wind howled like a beast in agony.

Something sharp and cold like chilled bone punched into his side, driving the air out of his lungs as if an Aggron had stomped on his back. He didn't notice he'd fallen until he tasted mud. It was like his body was a sheet of ice, and every move sent new cracks racing through it. And while it felt like his blood was turning to water, there was a tang of sharp, organic iron on his tongue and throat that made him gag.

If he ran, he would bleed out.

If he stayed, he'd be gutted like all the rest had died here.

A chemical fire lit itself in his blood competing with the water, forcing his heart to pump and struggle.

He stood up, and ran again.

But he wasn't running scared. He did not feel frightened for his own self. It was a feeling that he was not quite sure he understood, like he was running away from a specter, a ghost of something malevolent that had already reached inside his soul with cold, clammy claws and tore off a piece of it—and even now wanted more, to rip and more and more out of him until there was nothing left…

His paws were a clumsy beat as he flew through the weaves of vegetation and open stone. He could hear the Donphan behind him, growling and whuffing in discomfort as they battled the rain for their cruel masters. The sounds broke the clammy wall that had somehow wrapped his brain like an onion skin. Water. They didn't like water.

He was not sure if it was his vision that was fading in and out at the edges or the sheer amounts of water, pouring in. There had to be a river around here somewhere. Why was that? Yes, humans couldn't live without a ready…water source. He groped around for his wandering mind, forcing himself to focus. It was like trying to catch the current of a river in one's paws.

River. He strained to hear for the sounds of a growling, swollen river over the hiss and crack of his own passage through the brush, the thunder and crush and trumpeting behind him and the furious snarls of the storm and a weird choking, heaving, hitching sound. It was him, he realized stupidly a moment later. Smell was useless—all he could smell was the blood in his nose and mouth.

Indistinct shouts behind him were rising in pitch.

He had no clue where he was going. But he knew there must be a river, and it was close by. It had to be. Had to be.

He closed his eyes and stopped running. He had seconds to do this, or he would die where he stood. All was black. Even on that fuzzy, dark plane that was the Aura's, it was black. Except for the barely distinct blips of bluish noise. That hadn't been there before.

_It was the rain_.

_More water_, he thought to himself, _I must find moving water. _He tried to visualize throwing his waves from his body the same way he used to try and talk to the human, but this time, throwing it like he might a stone. It was more like trying to throw a fistful of feathers across a huge gap. He felt like his spirit was navigating through darkness, full of invisible obstacles, wandering blindly in a black cave. And then—

A flicker of movement. A ripple. Water? Just a little—to the left. A little further. Just…

Something heavy crashed into him and sent him flying, ripping the vision apart like rotten leaves. He landed heavily on his side, his breath sucked out violently as if by a vicious wind. Straining to get it back, he rolled to his feet. A gasping snarl of pain escaped him as he just barely staggered to avoid a second charge by the leading Donphan.

He was starting to feel like a pulped fruit as the blood continued to dribble from the arrow wound.

"Got you!" cried the rider.

"_Give in," _the Donphan advised, _"We might be able to save you if you stop now."_

The water had been to the left. Forward for a little while, and left. With a grunt of exertion, the Lucario threw himself into a run again, knowing by some grim instinct that if the Aura had failed him, he would not have the chance to try and run away again. He felt the ground grow suddenly soft; he slipped and plowed into the mud, skidding several feet. The Donphan behind him had all but caught up, the thunder of their feet softened by the mud, drowned out by the violent roar of the—

"It's a river!"

"Catch it, the damn thing's going to make a jump!"

And it was a river. And his pursuers were careening on their own momentum towards a sheer drop into a frothing indigo frothing inferno of water studded with slick black spires of stone. A dead Ratata wedged between a rock and a thick log snapped in half by water pressure caught his eye just as he gathered his strength, and jumped.

The river's throat was dark and cold, pulling his limbs in every direction and spinning him like a log careening down a mountainside. He was dimly aware of fire in his side, and yet, a strange ice seemed to dig in and around his shoulders and ribs, encircling his heart. The dappled black waters were sucking the fire out, leaving him feeling bloated and full of a hollow cold. He couldn't feel his limbs at all. The river was cruel, twisting him up to the surface just long enough for him to suck in half a gasp of wet air and water before pushing him back under again and slamming him against stones.

He tried to use Aura, but all he could see was blue, blue everywhere, swirling around him. Wherever stone and log was, there was simply nothingness.

The Lucario flung out a spike into a patch of nothingness, praying it wasn't a boulder.

The nothingness gave and he felt his paw anchored briefly by something hard and yet yielding. He opened his eyes. Through the water, the smooth feel of it, it was a log. Tumbling beneath it, buffeted by the current, was the pebbly sand of the bank. Fresh hope surged through him like fire's last burst of flame before crumbling into ash. He clawed his way up the surface, feeling as though his small claws might tear out of their sockets and opened his mouth to drink in the blessed air when the flesh around his side flinched, and he felt again the arrow sticking bent out of his side.

He hitched and inched his way down the log. He made it to the bank, but the moment he did every muscle in his body turned to water. He tumbled down the side and landed in the cool wet gravel of the bank, unable even to respond to the vicious stabbing of the arrow splintering deeper into his flesh on impact. His vision was black. He could not tell if his eyes were open or not.

The Lucario was certain of one thing though. He could feel it trickling out of his side and taste it in his mouth. He was dying as he had lived, unafraid of humans. Maybe because he was too stupid or had simply been so changed, but now it a bitter burst of irony he would at least understand why others did fear them.

"_You've not lived long or seen enough to know why. Not that you probably will," _the Noctowl had said.

_Wrong,_ he thought numbly. _I lived just long enough._

Voices. Were they voices? Voices from a past slipping away like mist rolled through his mind like a sunset.

_Once you get in contact with humans, you change, in a way that can't be changed._

_You belong here._

_Aura Guardians live to protect and understand the essence of all living things…_

_There is nothing for you here._

_Wild. Purposeless._

_Alone._

"_I will not die here," _he choked out. "_Not yet. _Not yet." With a final effort, the Lucario grit his teeth and pushed himself. He tried to forget his wounds and walk. Even his spirit was shouting where his voice couldn't. _NOT YET!_

There was a crunch of gravel. The Lucario was still as his consciousness fled into the dark.

There was ring of terror oscillating meanly on the Aura's plane near the small hamlet of Aspenshire, but it was a ghost—merely a remnant of the panic that had been messily extinguished, like the grimy ring left on a saucer by a damp teacup. Aaron sensed it as soon as he had come within range. He could tell little to nothing by just the Aura—only that it had been a surprise attack, that most or the entire village had been destroyed. The attackers were long gone.

More frustrating was the fact of the storm, indiscriminate and blind washing away valuable tracking information.

Aaron gripped Pidgeot's neck feathers with fingers that had long gone numb. The probability of survivors seemed dismal, even at this distance. Still…

He kneed Pidgeot lower and focused his mind. The storm soon became silent in his ears as he cast out a net of Aura like a fisherman, searching for anything that might indicate a survivor. He hadn't expected to find anything. And yet, just as he sensed something crossing over the river, a flash like an exploding star caught him off guard.

_Not yet!_

Something in the voice was familiar. It was like the memory of a tune that one couldn't remember the words to, but the melody itself brought back memories of some vague warmth. A genuine, special thing hidden away deep in the recess of childhood.

One thing was for sure: the voice didn't belong to a human. And no one alive had an Aura like that. But the flash had faded, leaving behind only a dying ember in the rain, somewhere just below him. It was on the riverbank. He urged the Pidgeot down, feeling his heart jump in his chest, pumping suddenly warm blood to numbed extremities. As soon as he was low enough, he leaped deftly off the Pidgeot's back with a crunch of gravel. The mighty creature landed beneath the boughs of a large tree.

On the Aura's plane, all blackness and oscillations of blue flame, the Lucario emanated a strange, dancing glow that made Aaron's freeze. It was familiar. The glow was soft; ambient rays that flickered, as if the light itself was breathing, in contrast to the carved, steadily shining lines of the auras surrounding. This was reason enough to look into it, said the analytical part of his mind. The other insisted that this creature shouldn't be allowed to die. As for why…there would be time to consider that later. He knelt beside it, laying his staff to the side. The Lucario's fur was crisscrossed with small lacerations. Cuts from the river rock, or the stone. Aaron dropped his staff and fell to his knees before leaning over the Pokémon. He inhaled sharply. A cruel arrow stuck out from the Lucario's side. New blood that hadn't been washed away from the river was seeping into the coarse mud-stiffened fur, spreading like some obscene flower. The bruised skin underneath flinched when Aaron brushed his fingers over it. It must have tried to jump the river to escape its pursuers, but it must have been wounded before attempting it. If it had not been wounded, the Lucario should have easily been able to jump a river.

Aaron bit the inside of his mouth, swallowing embers of anger that were threatening to burst into flame. He pulled a dagger from his belt and cut a part of his cloak into strips. He tried to wring them out as much as he could before wrapping them as best he could around the wound in an attempt to at least staunch the bleeding. He worked quickly. The dressings were sloppy at best, but the first order or business was to get the Lucario to Old Maddock before it lost more blood.

He tucked his staff under one arm and gathered up the Lucario. Its gleaming aura flickered in its intensity. "Hold on a little while longer," Aaron murmured, carrying it back to the Pidgeot. The Pidgeot inclined forward, tilting its head at its master's burden. "You can handle one more, right?" the Pidgeot gave an affirmative whistle and launched itself into the air.

Moments after they were airborne, Aaron felt the slap of the rain on his face lessen. Gradually, the darkness in the clouds seemed to drip out with the last of the rain. The storm was receding.

Aaron had long since grown used to the numbing effect of the sky's biting cold as the winds rushed past his face and neck, lifting gooseflesh in their passage, and was thus ever more disconcerted by the feeling of the Lucario's hot blood on his clothes, turned cold and stiff by the bitter air. Aaron impulsively took off his cloak and gingerly wrapped the Lucario in it. The flight wasn't a long one, but he found himself urging the Pidgeot hurry. It sensed his urgency. Within minutes they pierced the cloud cover, revealing the white-walled citadel of Rota sitting like a pale gem in the center of a slate colored lake, its thin towers thrusting upwards as if to reach the mist huddled around its highest peaks. It seemed to Aaron, not for the first time, very small and vulnerable despite its beauty.

Atop the towers, Cameran's banners snapped feebly in the wind. Armed soldiers crawled along the castle's twisting parapets and battlements like so many ants, their storm-wet armor glinting in the weak sunlight. Flying-type Pokémon of all kinds flitted in and out the aviary, conducting rounds around the skies surrounding the capital on the mainland and the castle proper. A small mounted guard paraded across the slender bridge. Water-going types dotted the waters around the lake, many equipped with armor, but the whorls and designs wrought upon it suggested a more ceremonial usage than practical battle. Compared to the rough, hard armor and large armies of their aggressive neighbors, it seemed a dedicated, but meager defense.

_No_, Aaron reminded himself. _A precaution. Cameran is neutral. _A country caught between two peoples that hated each other was certainly wise to equip itself. Just in case.

The Pidgeot landed in one of the baileys with a rush of cool air, scattering the servants and holsters on the premises. Some gasped in recognition or acknowledged him with a word or a wave before returning to their duties. The knights on the periphery started, but soon relaxed enough to content themselves with wary glares. Aaron, used to the scrutiny, ignored it. He dismounted with the Lucario in hand; the Pidgeot took leave of its master and took to the skies once again.

He hurried across the bailey for the small palisade alongside the stableyard, ignoring startled murmurs,

"Sir Aaron! You're back so soon!"

"What is that, Sir Aaron? A Pokémon?"

"Is it dead?"

He forced a smile at them, but didn't answer. Inside the palisade was a narrow stone building, surrounded by a fenced yard in which a somber, scarred Charmeleon was flexing a heavily bandaged arm, a Houndoom with only a stump of a tail slept, a Sandslash with sore red welts raised along its flanks rested alongside and adjacent to one another.

The Lucario's aura was flickering again.

Unable to use his arms, he prepared to shout to garner the attention of the keeper, but before he could so much as open his mouth, the door swung open, revealing a red-faced, bald little man with an exasperated expression and a weary-looking Clefairy at his side. A thin, but spry Delcatty appeared behind the Clefairy. The man wore an apron stained with various poultices, elixir ingredients and a few faded bloodstains. His sharp little eyes, normally narrowed with concentration opened a fraction wider, whether in shock or revulsion Aaron couldn't say.

"What's this?" he demanded. "What is this Pokémon? It's not one of ours, I can tell you that. Why did you bring it here, Aaron?"

Aaron flipped the part of his cloak concealing the Lucario's face. As he predicted, Maddock's little eyes widened. "I'll be damned," the words were like wind in rushes, spoken more to himself than to Aaron.

Aaronl cleared his throat. "Please, Maddock. It'll die if you don't take care of it."

The look of wonder on the doctor's face disappeared as his eyes narrowed again. "I can see that. But it's strange—Pokémon fight and kill and die in the wild all the time, you know that. And this wouldn't be the first Pokémon killed by our nasty neighbors. You also know better than to waste my time with them, too. You never cared then," he added rather nastily.

"It was injured by a Sandorian arrow. And most Pokémon will recognize a winner to a fight before fatal wounds are incurred. As you can see, this isn't a result of wild battle."

Maddock glanced over the unconscious Lucario.

"So it isn't. Bring it in here. Clefairy, find some clean linens and some more straw." The Clefairy, who'd been worriedly preening at the Lucario's face jumped to do as it was bid, chirping urgently.

Aaaron stepped inside. It was a narrow building with a stone floor and several small windows punched into the sides, allowing light to stream through and shine onto the small straw nests, each covered with a rag or linen, and each of which contained injured Pokémon, ten in total. Most of them slept, others looked in the direction of the newcomer with glazed, tired eyes. The Pokémon nests were fenced by a low gate. Adjacent to it was Maddock's bed, a tiny stone hearth with a fire within which an iron pot of water bubbled and steamed. A low, smooth stone table stood next to the fireplace. The air was warm and thick with the smell of herbs and steam and wet, dusty fur.

"Put it on the table." Maddock immediately set to work. He appraised the Pokémon's injuries with a critical eye, prodding the wound and checking over its body with experienced hands. Aaron turned to go and leave Maddock to his work, but the healer stopped him with a bark,

"Don't move. You're impossible to track down, and I've wanted to talk to you for awhile. Sit."

After a moment's hesitation, Aaron sat down.

"It's a good thing you didn't pull this arrow out before you got here. Would have killed him on the spot if you had. Delcatty, go heat up the iron." While the Delcatty fetched the tool, the Clefairy dripped an anesthesia from a soaked rag into the Lucario's open mouth.

Aaron almost stood up to question the method, but stopped himself. Maddock knew what he was doing. Normally, Aaron didn't think the healer would even try to give anesthetic to a Pokémon in that condition—the trace poison in it would stop its heart. Aaron blinked. Maddock must have realized upon looking at the Lucario's protruding bone spikes that because of their texture and hardness that Lucario must at least partially belong to the Steel family. It was just now that Aaron took a harder look at the spikes. They bore a striking resemblance to the bones of Mawile. How had he not noticed that before?

"Put these in," Maddock said, tossing Aaron a pair of cotton wads wrapped in Whimsur leather. The Delcatty suffered itself to wear them as well.

The moment that he placed them in, all sound was immediately snuffed like light from a candle. Maddock wedged the arrow spoon into the Lucario's side. Ripping the wound open wider caused an instant reaction: the Lucario's entire body flinched violently and its eyes, unseeing and bloodshot rolled in its head. But the moment they opened, the Clefairy opened its mouth. Aaron had to assume it was singing the Lucario to sleep, for seconds afterwards the Lucario slumped back into unconsciousness. Maddock cauterized the wound with the hot iron and dressed it before finally washing his hands and sitting down. The Clefairy and the Delcatty carried the Pokémon to a vacant nest.

"It's lost a lot of blood," he said as he worked. "Treating the outside is the best I can do for now." He glanced up and met Aaron's eyes before refocusing his attention. "And this Pokémon is male. So he was injured by a Sandorian arrow you say. That's odd. I didn't think even those bastards would kill Pokémon as rare as Lucario. It must have been half-dead when you found it. Not something to do with your research?" The question carried a sharp edge.

Aaron, who had seated himself on a stool by the door resisted the urge to clench his fists and kept his face congenial.

"It seemed like a terrible shame for a creature that worked so nobly for life and freedom to die alone on a riverbank. I believe it survived the River Ingress' rapids with the arrow in its side." He studied the Lucario. Its aura had not improved, but it had not diminished any further either. It still flickered and danced in that odd, vibrant way, the blue tendrils flickering as if the light itself was breathing short, irregular gasps. He'd only seen auras like that in other Guardians like himself, but as he was the last one remaining in Cameran, he had no current example to compare it to. He could hardly analyze his own. He also wasn't sure if this type of aura, or at least one similar, was common to Lucario, or if this individual was unique. He'd only seen it once before, long ago—

"You always get that look, thinking about that wizardry." Maddock snipped.

Aaron blinked. "Aura isn't wizardry."

"Then what is it, if not that?"

"It's a binding principle, a force that everything in this world shares, and so much more than that. Balance of aura is crucial; I believe it to be a factor in major historical events as well as day-to-day living. Aura's seen to reflect emotion, and health and state of being…" his voice had risen and then dropped in its intensity as Maddock lifted his eyes once more and met Aaron's with a weary sort of knowing.

"All very important stuff, I'm sure," Maddock said. "…in more peaceful times."

The only sound was the crackle of flames. A log snapped and slid into cinders beneath the pot of boiling water.

Aaron looked at the ground, the brim of his hat covering his eyes.

He was surprised to find that Maddock, someone who worked with Pokémon, commoners with time for emotion and children was so adverse to his studies. But it almost always came down to a lack of understanding—and understanding that many did not seem to want clarified if only to maintain the fragile stability of their worlds. Who besides might understand? And aura, for the most part, remained invisible. Oh, the laity were usually happy to believe in what they could not see, in sharp contrast to the gentry and nobility Aaron was typically forced to deal with. However, they seemed to pay little attention or care to it, since they did not understand the impact of aura in their daily lives. In the end, it was like air; despite its key role in sustaining life, was taken for granted and generally not thought about. Similarly, aura, the most pervasive of elements in all living things besides the soul, was forgotten. "Research is not an idle thing," he said quietly, "And we are not yet at war."

"No," Maddock said. "But we do what we can. And tell me, Sir Aaron—when it comes down to this country, what good is the knowledge of aura in times such as these?" it was a question that Maddock obviously believed had or needed no answer; he returned to his work. The Clefairy regarded Aaron with an almost apologetic-looking face before trotting over to the door and staring expectantly.

Aaron knew a dismissal when he saw one. He dipped at the waist in a short bow to the Pokémon medic. "Please let me know when the Lucario wakes up. Good day, Maddock." He grabbed his cloak off the wall and let the door shut with a click behind him.


	5. Doors

Disclaimer: Obviously, I don't own Pokémon.

A/N: Aaand, this took entirely way longer than expected. Holy crap, this chapter did NOT want to be written. I rewrote the thing about four times, and even now, I don't know if I'm completely happy with it. Even so, I've delayed long enough (college has not helped this process! Gah!), so here it is in all its glory. Again, I apologize for the wait, and I still agonize over this chapter's relative shortness.

Thank you, lovely readers for bearing with me. And sorry, Aaron and Lucario don't meet until the next chapter, bwahaha. No, seriously, I promise.

Reviews feed the college student soul better than chicken soup! In all seriousness, friends, constructive criticism and feedback are a boon. It's the only way we writers improve. But also, it is always encouraging to hear that our work is appreciated. I love you guys for that. So thanks to you all, reviewers both signed and anonymous (and to all you readers, both silent and vocal). I appreciate you guys very much. Thank you for your wonderful support^_^.

_Threads of the Soul_

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* * *

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_© DeskRage, 2010_

_Doors_

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* * *

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Aaron had barely taken two steps out of Maddock's infirmary before he felt his heart sink. Two boys barred his path. He could tell they were squires by the colors on their clothes, each the colors of their respective masters, but more importantly, each bore the insignia of the Pokémon Knights in black on their chests. Their expressions were an odd mix of the apologetic and the wary. At the feet of the taller one snuffled a Swinub. The shorter of the two had a Zubat flapping patiently at his ear.

The taller one stiffened and spoke to Aaron as though he were a Voltorb about to explode.

"Sir Aaron, Commander Shaleton requests your presence at the arena."

"Is that so?" Aaron had stayed too long with Maddock. If he had left sooner he would have been able to change his bloodied clothes. But even that might have been useless. The old commander must have seen him enter the Pokémon palisade containing the infirmary and stationed these two outsides soon afterwards to prevent him from getting away.

There would be little avoiding the coming conversation.

"Yes, sir. If you'll follow us…"

Aaron grimaced at the thought of the Captain's wrath, often described by his subordinates as "colder than Sneezle breath, sharp as Bedrill spines and heavier than a Rhyhorn's armor". Depending on his given mood, it could be one or all three. He shuddered to think of what it might be today. Probably the Ryhorn armor, he thought as he approached the Pokémon training grounds, taking care to avoid grumpy guards and hurrying servants.

Despite himself, a sense of familiarity,—ease, even—stole over him like a thin blanket as he approached the training compound, the commands of trainers falling flat on the dead air, the cries of Pokémon in mock-battle. Even so, he shifted his cloak so that it covered most of the bloodstains on his clothes. Two guards, wearing light armor and carrying no weapons stood at the heavy double doors, flanked by a pair of sleek Pokémon; a Gravler and a Marowak with jewel-bright, intelligent eyes. They perked up as Aaron approached, their auras—formerly stoic and rigid like their handlers—brightening and softening at the edges.

At least the Pokémon were always happy to see him. They scrambled up from their posts, circling him as if inspecting something. The Marowak nuzzled his leg in a familiar gesture before returning to his handler's side. The Graveler regarded him with a slightly reproachful look.

Well, he had been gone for three days. And judging by the Marowak's look, he'd smelled the blood on Aaron's clothes.

"Nice to see you two again," Aaron said apologetically.

The two Pokémon knights at the door relaxed as well, but not before one of them called out in recognition, "So, you two," he said the squires, "You caught him. Aaron! What about us?"

"Malthus. And is that you Rodd? I'm sorry I can't say. Your looks haven't improved over the three days I've been gone. But still, these two here are enough to balance it out."

Aaron was usually on tinterhooks when it came to bantering back and forth with the Pokémon knights—depending on their mood or the events of the day, such as irate tensions with the Cameran Royal Guard or their eagerness to get him to enlist, humorous exchange could either be taken in stride like old friends or become a personal insult. However, judging by the smiles—admittedly weary, but friendly—on their faces and their casual stances, he figured it was worth a shot.

Malthus, the one who'd spoken chuckled grimly. "I'll be able to say the same for you soon enough. The Captain looks as if he'll about rearrange that face of yours. News got in that your Pidgeot was in the aviary almost an hour and a half ago."

"Did you find anything?" The smaller, younger guard, Rodd, looked eager. Something in his face and the way he glanced furtively at Malthus suggested that they had already heard something—either about the blood on the Pidgeot's back—he had not thought of that—or the Lucario.

"The Commander sent for me through these two. Stand down." After a heartbeat of tense waiting, and they allowed him to pass without comment. Their silence had a smug feeling to it. He resisted the urge to grit his teeth. The squires dispersed like smoke as soon as the gate opened.

Even though it was getting late, there were several trainers and their Pokémon working into the dusk. Even in the dim light, the trainer's foreheads and the hides of their Pokémon glistened with the sweat of hard work; a burly Dodrio and trainer in full armor clattering and leaping at fantastic speeds over bars and crates, a Scyther, heavily engaged in mock battle with a large Skarmory, a Magnemite smashing wooden targets with precisely aimed bolts of lightning to the encouragement of its handler, a Ryhorn and its armored trainer testing their strength by lifting weights of wood and iron—or other Pokémon—and many others, all sweating and straining in preparation for a battle that might not end in an unconscious opponent, but many, many dead.

Most were so engaged in their training that they didn't give Aaron much notice.

He found the Commander under one of the small canopies erected at the edge of the compound, watching the action with his stony face with what Aaron supposed was satisfaction; his aura, steely and hard was sometimes the only way he could interpret him.

"You have speed! Use it!" he was bellowing at a hapless young trainer, who was attempting to direct a young Nidorino wearing too-big armor in battle against his own large, scarred old Tyrannitar, which was standing patiently, waiting for the Nidorino to come. "When fighting opponents that much larger all you can hope to do is wear it away little by little until reinforcements come! In the meantime, get your creature to move! If this were a true battle, you'd both be squashed by now." The trainer gave an affirmative squeak, and it was then that the Captain noticed Aaron's approach. His bushy gray brows met in a sharp V, deepening the craggy wrinkles of his forehead, his mouth a grim line.

"Took your time, I see!" he growled. "Where have you been?" Aaron winced inwardly. Much of what the Commander clearly wanted to say was left unsaid: _What have you been doing, you better have a good excuse, I've been waiting for over an hour, I've been hearing all kinds of things… _"We're preparing for war."

Not quite, Aaron thought, but he was silent. He was reluctant to tell Nath about the Lucario, but he sooner or later, he'd find out. And the longer it took the news to reach him, the madder he'd probably be. Even so, Aaron held back.

"Evariste has withdrawn almost all of its forces from our eastern border. Only a few stragglers remain with several flying types by their sides, except for the regular raiding parties that use our mountain passes as an avenue to reach their enemies in Sandor. Sandor, as of two days ago, has been using them as well. But…" his eyes hardened at the thought.

"But what?" Nath snapped.

Aaron looked up. "I found the hamlet of Aspenshire razed. Substantial evidence of a struggle of some magnitude.I believe the attack to have been perpetrated by Sandor," he inclined his head. The shadow of his hat obscured his eyes. "There were no human survivors."

"Aspenshire is destroyed?" Nath didn't flinch or even blink in any common indication of surprise. Instead, his voice, already gravelly took on an extra rasp as if his vocal cords were made of stone. There was a tightness around his eyes, a hardening of the aura that flickered around him. Abruptly, he turned over what looked like a training sheet and started scrawling what could only be Aaron's report with a piece of charcoal."And you _believe_ it was Sandorian? So you are not certain? I thought your Aura would be able to get something better than that."

Aaron chose his words carefully. "The style of the attack was out of character. I did not stay to examine the site entirely, in order to report this as quickly as possible. Their yearly extortion from our villagers is usually carried out by roving bands seeking to sustain themselves on their way to attack Evariste. The destruction they cause has never been of this kind of magnitude.

"Nor," he added quietly, "So deliberate."

Nath frowned, his heavy brows gouging worried lines across his brow. This frown made him appear almost a decade older than he was, suddenly weary tired. "Aspenshire is too close to the capital for it to have been mere chance. I will inform the King immediately." He stood, his bones snapping and cracking like celery in protest. He glanced at his notes and frowned. "However, we cannot act on this kind of vague information. I want something concrete and conclusive by tomorrow. I'll send our best trackers over there with you."

"Don't you mean _your _best trackers?" The statement was softly spoken, but carried with it the hard ring of quiet insistence.

Nath bristled. Aaron thought he looked like he was trying very hard not to roll his eyes. _"_Aaron. How long are we going to keep up this charade? You've been taking your orders from me—by your own choice—since you were made a knight last year. Your common blood makes automatically excludes you from the Royal Guard. The people associate you with us. You are a Pokémon Knight in all but name alone."

"This is not correct, Commander. I am an Aura Guardian. They are not the same. If there is nothing else, I will take my le—"

Indistinct shouts rang out from beyond the gate, mingling with the clank of armor. Both men dropped the conversation like a hot coal and swept over to the gate. Something heavy bashed open the doors and ignoring the indignant cries of the two guards marched inside.

By this time, most of the Pokémon and trainers inside the compound had whirled to face the intruders. Aaron, upon recognizing them lowered his staff. Most of the trainers, on the other hand, refused to stand down.

Two armed soldiers, one thin, red-haired man mounted on a Ryhorn and the other, a burly, pale haired one on a Donphan cast a critical eye over the compound. The shiny thread in their uniforms and wrought armor caught the fading sunlight. Unusually, their armor and clothes were spattered with mud. Evidence of bramble scratches and bits of leaves clung to their mounts leathers and even their hair, suggesting a flight of some kind. The Donphan's tusks were stained rusty yellow at the tips, as if it had recently gored something and the evidence washed away. They were so filthy that Aaron could not make out the insignias on their clothes.

"Ho, Pokémon Knights! We're looking for Captain Rio. Urgent news. We did not expect to find him here, but after exhausting other options, we thought we'd drop by!"

Aaron narrowed his eyes and said nothing. Their manner suggested some kind of nobility, but their accents betrayed them to be otherwise. He could have sworn he had at least seen the one on the Donphan before. The Ryhorn's rider was completely unfamiliar to him.

"What is the matter with you?" demanded the trainer with the Nidorino. "Charging in here like you own the place, we thought we were under attack!"

"Rio wouldn't dirty his boots by setting one foot in this arena! Get lost!"

"Silence!" Nath barked at his troops. Turning his attention to the two, he folded his arms and addressed them. "If you have something to say, speak your piece and get out."

"Peace, peace!" Another voice rang out from beyond the gates. This one, Aaron did recognize. Grimly, he watched as a Rapidash, all intense flame, muscle and pride cantered towards them before gliding to a halt. It pawed the ground and tossed its head with a snort, glaring through the armor on its head in the manner of a lord greeted by serfs. Its sleek hide bore old scars.

Stalking out behind the Rapidash was a Luxray. A vicious, barely contained energy sought release in each swift step it took. Its tail was stiff with either agitation or poise, and its aura reminded Aaron of a barely suppressed temper just waiting to explode.

Though Rapidash and Luxray were both Pokémon unheard of in these parts, the Pokémon of _nobles_, most impressive was the Infernape. It loped with liquid confidence and grace alongside the Rapidash, with its shining crown of red flame creating stark black shadows against the ground. Its expression was as commanding as any Pokémon's could ever be.

Their master, though, was as impressive as his Pokémon. They were in fact, the Pokémon of—

"Lord Skylar's returned," someone among the Pokémon Knights mumbled. His voice was caught halfway between what sounded like resentment and wonder. Skylar was young. His hair was neat and dark, with pale brown eyes so light and proud they nearly appeared gold. His skin, unlike that of many nobles of his caste was darkened from long travels. The gleaming insignia of the Royal Guard gleamed on his chest, superimposed on his family's crest. He smiled at Nath. It was not an expression so haughty to be a smirk, but it was too condescending to truly be a smile.

He was exactly as Aaron remembered. Except for the new scar, pink and fleshy, that gouged its way from the bridge of his nose to his left cheekbone. His Luxio had evolved, as well.

Nath narrowed his eyes. Aaron heard him murmur out of the corner of his mouth to an awed young squire, "Deliver this report to the Crown Prince or the King, whomever you see first. Go, now." He shoved the parchment into the boy's hand and clenched his small fist around it. The boy took off like an arrow from a bow though the gates.

The Infernape and the Luxray watched him go, but Skylar paid no attention.

"My lord Nath of Shaleton," he addressed the commander, "I am sorry that our entrance frightened your trainers, but it is hardly our fault that they turn out to be so skittish. I do apologize for the overexcitement of my retainers. I will speak with them later. I understand that tensions are running high, but we bring urgent news for our Captain Rio. Is he about?"

Nath pursed his lips. He opened his mouth to speak, but he hesitated. Finally, he barked out, "There's still light yet, men. Back to your training. Officers, stay here. The rest of you, disperse!"

With only a few grumbles, the trainers and their Pokémon lumbered off. Aaron remained where he was.

Nath turned back to Skylar. "If it's about Aspenshire, my boy, you have come too late. Sir Aaron here has already delivered the intelligence, and the Crown is being informed as we speak."

"_Sir _Aaron?" Skylar turned to look at him. Aaron sensed himself being appraised—not unlike the way he had so recently evaluated Skylar himself. He kept his face impassive, his grip on his staff loose and easy. "It has been a long while, old friend. Since when have you been a Pokémon Knight? This is an interesting development. Yet…" he made a theatrical gesture of looking around, "I see no Pokémon by your side. Although I did hear some interesting things in the stockade about very lucky stray that someone seems to have picked up. Flown in by Pidgeot this afternoon."

Skylar did not make eye contact with him. He was looking at Nath. Nath, held his gaze instead of falling into the social trap of staring at Aaron in surprise in response to the implication, but Aaron could feel the incredulity rolling off of the man's Aura in waves.

Aaron tipped his hat forward and gripped his staff.

"Allow me to correct you on a misunderstanding, Sir Skylar. I am an Aura Guardian. Allow me to remind you that the two are quite distinct." He started to walk away. "If I remember correctly, Captain Rio should be down by the caves drilling Water type trainers. If you'll excuse me, I have work to do."

"Look for me, Sir Aaron," Skylar called after him, "I'm interested to see how the years have treated you. We'll catch up soon."

Aaron pulled the doors to the arena shut behind him, but instead of clicking into place, they jammed and bounced back, leaving the gate partially open.

* * *

The Lucario floated in darkness for what seemed like a long time. He felt like he was weightless, bobbing, with a strange humming in his ears that sent his thoughts scattering like the ripples on the surface of a disturbed pond. He could have stayed that way, like one dead, until the pain bloomed out of the darkness, reminding him that he was alive.

Very much alive. The humming stopped. The Lucario felt his thoughts shudder back into place as he opened his eyes. His eyelids were crusty like cracked mud. His vision swam thickly into focus.

A surge of panic punched through him with the force of a rock hurled through a

Spinarak-web. His brain was awash with fragmented memory—the arrow, the chase, the destruction, the river and—

Where was he? Warm, thick air filled his lungs. He was in a dark place, full of strange, straight angles lit by throbbing red embers in a square niche. He tried to smell, inhale, but the sharp tang of herbs and the intake of breath made his body _ache._ He flinched. The sound made a rustle—he was lying on something soft, but beneath a veil of—fabric?—was the crunch and rustle of dry grass. His breath came in little gasps as he took in the rest of this cavelike space: dull metal things glinted on the wall. He tried to sit up, and fell back for the pain, trying to quell the rising wave of panic. Relax. Relax.

Straight angles, wood and stone. Fire. In a manner that could only be described as stilted, his mind came back to him. Those were things associated with humans. And this place was full of them. He noticed a big square hole, covered with a sheet of glass that allowed sunlight to pierce the gloom. Then he realized: he was inside a human dwelling. Inside a house. He'd never been in one before.

"_You're awake. That's better than I expected, even after two days,"_ A Delcatty appeared out of nowhere, perching on what the Lucario recognized as a stool and curling his tail around his paws, _"How are you feeling?" _ The Delcatty uncurled and hopped down from the stool, sniffing at the strips of faded cloth wound neatly around the Lucario's middle and his left paw.

"_Exhausted, that's what!" _a Clefairy bustled from behind a table.

It had red-rimmed eyes, but appeared to be in good spirits. _"Why don't you go find Master, Delcatty? He'll want to see our new charge is awake."_

The Delcatty blinked in response. With a flick of his tail, he turned, and hopped out one of the open windows.

"_Don't mind him, dear. He might seem like all business, but he's actually quite the worry-wart. Try not to move." _The Clefairy was pressing down lightly on the Lucario's chest to keep him from sitting all the way up. His fur was flaring out as though he had been shocked. Her touch unnerved him. Aside from his mother—and those two human children from an age ago—the only physical contact he regularly had with other creatures was that of battle.

But more importantly… _"Where am I? How…?" _Halfway through the thought, memories returned like a landslide. Visions of _war_ pounded down on his brain like a landslide. He found himself narrowing his eyes as if he had a headache. Just barely did he resist the urge to hold his head. He wished he had never learned that word. But even so, after the blurry events leading up to jumping into the river, he remembered nothing but darkness. _"How did I get here?"_

The Clefairy worked as she spoke, checking his bandages before scurrying around the room, gathering several containers, leaves, a bowl of stone, and a small cylindrical stone. _"You're in Castle Alderan. Oh dear, but you're wild, so um…think of it as a bit human nest, made of stone and wood. Important humans who rule their domains live in them. The King, the most powerful human in this territory lives here._

_As for what happened to you…" _she put the leaves in the bowl, added what looked like water and proceeded to pound it with the stone. The sudden violence of the action made the Lucario blink in surprise. She continued, her words punctuated by the grinding of the stone. _"Wounded by an arrow and at death's door by the time Sir Aaron brought you in. He saved your life. If you had lost any more blood, there would have been nothing Master Maddock, Delcatty and I would have been able to do for you. Please don't sit up, dear."_

The Lucario stopped struggling. His continued and unconscious attempts to sit up were starting to hurt his ribs. But his heart had stilled, shuddering to what felt like a weird halt.

"_He saved…my life?"_

"_Why, yes."_

"_If this…Sir Aaron had not found me, I would be dead?"_

"_Most certainly. He'll be by so you can thank him later!"_

Her cheerful tone was completely lost on the Lucario, who sank back into his bed of straw. Such an odd phrase. To save a life. But for someone to have _saved _his life, the Lucario would have had to lose it in the first place.

It was one thing for a mother, or members of a pack to save their offspring, or their mates. In a way, they passed on their lives to each other. But for an unrelated third party, one who could gain nothing from it?

An odd image appeared in his head. A Pokémon, too weak to protect a fruit it had picked from a larger, more aggressive creature who had then taken it. And then, another creature—equal in strength to the aggressor, expending energy to get it back. But in defiance of natural laws, that creature saw it fit to give it back to the one who lost it. In that case, the berry would not be that of the one who had lost it even then, but belonging to the one who had seen it fit to give it back…

The door swung open. A human stepped through the threshold. He smelled more like a creature of the wild than a human. The scent of moist soil, pungent vegetation and Pokémon hair clung to him like dew. Though the Lucario could tell he was old, he moved with an energy that so suggested otherwise it confused him for a moment.

The Delcatty threaded between the humans legs as he stepped inside before hopping up onto the table.

Before either could do or say anything, the Lucario surprised himself by beating them to it.

_Who are you?_

The old human seemed to stagger in surprise. He blinked like a Hoothoot in bright light and peered at the Lucario as if confused for a moment. Then, he started to chuckle. "I'll be damned," he said. "I've heard Psychics and Ghosts speak in the head, but this…" he shook his head, "…truly, fascinating. I wonder if that young fool knew before he rescued you. Well, makes my job easier. You're looking a lot better. I imagine you still hurt like hell, but at least you're alive, right?"

He introduced himself as a certain "Maddock the Healer" and placed the stone bowl in front of the Lucario. It was the weird mash the Clefairy had been making. The man had added some kind of—bird-flesh, but it had been ruined by exposure to heat. It looked and smelled like it had been soaked in…water. The Lucario stared stupidly at it for a moment, before remembering that humans always did this to their meat for some reason.

_I'm not…_

"I didn't ask you if you were. Eat that. Clefairy will bring you some iron to nibble on later. Can't have you dying on me, after all. Would ruin my reputation." He turned to walk down the small aisle filled with other ailing Pokémon and tend to them.

The Delcatty looked after him, cocking his head in what appeared to be confusion. _"Didn't he say he would get Sir Aaron once our friend here woke?"_

The Lucario looked up, a mix of hope and anxiety flaring up behind his eyes. He wanted very badly to see this Sir Aaron. He wanted to know the person who had saved him. Most of all, he wanted to understand the implications of it according to the rules of the one who had saved him.

"_I get the feeling that Lucario isn't quite up to a chat with him yet," _the Clefairy said. _"Please eat that, dear. Cold cooked meat isn't very tasty, so I hear."_

"_It's not," _the Delcatty supplied, licking a paw.

The Lucario nosed into the mash tentatively. Eating out of a bowl was oddly embarrassing—an emotion he was unaccustomed to, to say the least. He was not sure why, but it just…was.

He wanted to talk about Sir Aaron, learn about the one who had saved his life. However, he did not speak. He did not feel like he was really in a position to make requests.


	6. Threads of the Soul

Disclaimer: Obviously, I don't own Pokémon.

A/N: Holy CRAP. This took freaking forever. This so far has been the hardest chapter to write. A lot of characters, a lot of dialogue, a lot of introductions, but mostly Lucario's internal process. But that aside, it is finally done, and I am terribly sorry it took this long. My subsequent posts should not take this long. Midterms are coming up, what with work and a research paper on my list of to do's…it's not been easy. But enough of my whining.

Constructive criticism is nutritious cookies because I know that my style and writing needs improvement. Thanks again to my wonderful reviewers and readers. I love hearing about what you guys think about this whole process. You guys are what make this story appear. So, after the longest author's note I ever hope to write, enjoy the chapter.

_Threads of the Soul_

_© DeskRage, 2010_

_Threads of the Soul_

Despite the late caution in handling the castle's material resources, Skylar of Larkspur's welcome did not go uncelebrated by the Royal Guard and even many of the nobles that were taking residence of the palace. Even the King and the Crown Prince made appearance. Skylar's family was heavily in the King's favor. This fact was reflected in more ways than just one…

Aaron ran his hand over his face. He wondered how Rin was doing. Had it really been eight years since she'd been sent to the Larkspur estate for training? She must be about…sixteen now. Learning her duties and manners. She had used to send him letters, when they were younger. Aaron used to reply, as well. However, it was not until he reached the age of fourteen that he realized how dangerous—and how selfish he had been. What they had had as children was no longer proper as adults. He could not afford to compromise her honor. Even something as innocent as a letter to an old childhood friend could be used as a bitter weapon in the jungle that was the court politics. He had ceased in his replies entirely.

_If you really cared about that, you would have burned those letters. _He needed to stop dwelling on that. He needed to stop thinking about her. And yet, he still found himself treasuring those memories. One in particular stuck out, like a star. Sitting back to back in the hay loft of the Pokémon stockade, looking up at the stars through the hole in the roof that had not yet been patched.

_Aaron, _he remembered her saying_, will you still have time to play with me when you get your own Pokémon?_

He remembered his instant, foolish reply. _Of course. We'll all play together. He'll be your friend as much as he'll be mine._

_I'd like that._

All he could hope was that she was happier than she had been before.

He shook his head. Back to the present. The past was the past. Just memories.

It had been almost three years since Skylar's return to the castle. However, the surprisingly lavish dinner was punctuated by a tension that clung to people's auras like a chill fog to wet morning grass. Skylar, born storyteller that he was, seemed to be trying to keep the mood as light as possible. And he was good at it.

Telling stories had always been one of Skylar's strengths. His adventures all over the south, culminating in rich Evariste to the west had helped balance out the recent tragedy. People were a little more content to leave it until council the following day.

Aaron for his part found himself repeating over and over what he had found: inconclusive evidence. To every Royal Guardsman, noble, and even the Crown Prince himself he had indicated his suspiciouns and doubt. All but the Crown Prince and Sir Cennar, however, seemed intent on taking Skylar's emphatic word that only Sandor could be responsible for the tragedy.

"Who else could it possibly have been?" He had asked, gesturing with his hands. "I was just in Evariste. They are strong and have never had reason to attack us before. While I was there, the second prince indicated that a formal alliance between our two nations would be more possible than ever before, what with Sandor's aggressive movement."

Over the clanking of silverware and several conversations at once, Aaron had chosen not to intervene. He would have his hands full trying to get through to them at the council meeting once he had gained better insight into what actually happened. He would visit the site tomorrow dawn.

Besides, he was having a hard enough time trying to dodge Nath. Skylar's implication that Aaron had gotten a Pokémon was not lost on the Commander. Aaron hated the 'flee' option, but until he was certain of what the injured Lucario wanted, Aaron was loath to say anything about it. Even if Aaron did not claim the Lucario, Nath was certain to want to keep it here for a different young trainer if there were no claims to it. And if Aaron did claim it, Nath would continue to press about joining the Knights. More than anything, Aaron wanted to approach Nath with his own Pokémon when he was ready. Then, the encounter would be on his own terms.

He did bump into Sir Cennar earlier. Ever since the soft-spoken knight had stood up for him all those years ago, their relationship had progressed into a comfortable alliance. A friendship, based on common experience and status as outsiders. It was not particularly close, but it was a camaraderie.

"All these warmongers…" Sir Cennar had mumbled into his mulled wine. "We can't afford to get into a war with Sandor. And I don't care what Skylar says. Historically, Evariste has done nothing but stab us in the back whenever it had the chance…an alliance with them is ridiculous."

"This is the most assertive I've seen you," Aaron attempted a joke.

"I guess it's one of the only things I get worked up about. But I'm a coward. I only say it to people I know won't bite my head off…"

Aaron shook his head internally. Cennar always sold himself short on his own merit. He had stood up to powerful peers in the past, had he not?

He left the dinner as soon as socially possible. The more time he spent in that room, the more frustrated he felt. No one was listening to each other, and he was seriously considering heading over to Maddock's cabin to check on the Lucario despite not having seen the Delcatty anywhere.

Instead of taking the short way, he made to walk over the battlements and head down the stairs the long way. The cool air felt calming on his skin, as hot as it was from being cooped up in a room filled with too many overdressed bodies, hot food and thick, steamy smells.

To his surprise, he sensed a familiar aura up ahead as he turned the corner. It was not until he saw him though, that he realized it was actually Skylar. He stifled his surprise. He must have left even before Aaron did. Was he so wrapped up in getting away from Nath that he did not notice the life of the party had gone?

Skylar turned to him and grinned in greeting. He gestured for Aaron to come closer. Aaron did. He had been planning to approach Skylar, to learn if he had changed at all—but more importantly, he wanted to see if he could figure out what Skylar was up to. Aaron could tell by the glint in Skylar's eye he knew Aaron suspected him. Of course, he would pretend like nothing was wrong. He would play-act. Aaron was no stranger to this game, as much as he hated it. Besides, avoiding his invitation right now would send the message that Aaron was afraid of Skylar. And that was the last impression he wanted to give.

"You see that, Aaron? This is the sight I miss when I travel." Skylar gestured to the horizon. The sky was black, glimmering with fat blue stars that hung in the sky like ripe cherries. The purple peaks sawed at the horizon like teeth, but even from this view, the Tree of Beginning dominated the skyline like a god among the mountains, rising from the old stone like a living being, organic and giving off waves so powerful that Aaron could not truly perceive it in the same manner that he could not truly hear some sounds so low or high they were beyond human hearing. The Tree of Beginning. Home of Mew. "It reminds me how truly small and insignificant we are. How simple. Even from here, you can feel its mystery. Will its secrets ever come to light?" the last part was directed at Aaron.

"Never all. But some." Aaron said. A small smile, involuntary in nature twitched around his mouth. Skylar laughed. "You never change. So, how about your theories about the Green Light? About the Mew?"

What about those, indeed? Aaron had developed many hypothesis and theories in his short career. His ability to do research had been slowed by recent developments concerning rising tensions between Cameran's neighbors. It had been going on since right before Skylar left. It was difficult for Aaron to move around as he wished. He reported to Nath out of necessity, as much as the Commander insisted he had chosen the position, but learning about what could very well be critical discoveries concerning the Tree of Beginning and the effects of aura were not considered pursuits worth time that could be spent patrolling borders. On the opinion of aura, many, from Maddock to most of the court had at least that much in common.

That had not exactly stopped him, though. It did lead to more melted wax on his desk, strained eyes and more ink stains, but it would never stop him.

For a heartbeat, he found himself at war. Part of him wanted to share some of his discoveries—Skylar was one of two people throughout his life who was truly curious and had the schooling to appreciate. However, Skylar's known tendency to turn information into a weapon stopped him. But even then, what was the point of concealing it? Eventually, Aaron would publish his discoveries, as all the previous Aura Guardians had done before him. Other scholars would read them to be sure. Skylar did, because he had both the leisure time and interest.

He could find out with the rest of them, then.

"Well enough," he said. "I still have a lot of work to do. I also have to revisit Aspenshire before too long." Tonight, even. The longer he waited, the more he felt like something was slipping past him.

He noticed several things. Skylar was staring intently out at the horizon line, as if he was looking for something. His aura was tight with what seemed like_ anticipation. _But his posture suggested nothing of the kind.

"Truly a shame about Aspenshire. But I seriously doubt you will find anything. Especially in this dark."

"Then perhaps it would be wise for me to leave while the light is at its brightest." Aaron turned to leave, but before he could get very far, Skylar was talking again.

" Those damned Sandorians will pay once the King and his military officers meet. They've made a common enemy of themselves for both us and Evariste. Perhaps now, finally, we can come to agree on a formal alliance, instead of being forever caught between two hostile parties."

He sounded so certain of himself. Aaron tried to stifle the prickles of annoyance beginning to make themselves apparent under his skin. He stopped and turned to face Skylar once again.

"I am the only one to have visited the site personally. There was no conclusive evidence that it was Sandor, even though it does appear that way. Until we have certainties, at the very least, Commander Nath and others will not move. It would be foolish for us to go to war over something like this without evidence."

Skylar sighed theatrically and shook his head. "Aaron, Aaron. Let us be frank. Nath is but a Commander of Pokémon Knights. Less than half of them are landed nobles. And people have gone to war for less, you know."

He noticed that Skylar was staring out at the horizon again. His pale eyes were moving. He _was_ looking for something.

"The King, the Crown Prince and the court have all recognized them. And just because nations have gone to war for less is no reason for us to consider doing the same. A small nation like us would have far more to lose. Now, good evening, Skylar." Revenge, he added to himself, was a good motivation, but a poor excuse for men and Pokemon alike to die.

Aaron looked at the moon. It was well on its way to the zenith, but more and more, he felt the weight of time pressing down on his chest for some reason. He had a lot to do. He would go to Maddock and take a look at the arrow that had wounded the Lucario. Then, he would check the site…

An aura flashed on the edge of his perception. He turned. Skylar's Luxray was loping up the staircase. It was panting lightly, as if it had been running. The sleek creature swept by Aaron, but not before fixing is lurid golden eyes on him before curling up at Skylar's side.

Skylar ran his fingers through the Pokémon's mane. "You're really going off to check the site? There's no _point_, Aaron. You won't find anything but ashes."

Skylar stopped petting the Luxray. That was odd, that it was here alone. When the two Pokemon were younger, they were never seen without the other. Where was the Infernape?

He followed Skylar's line of sight out onto the horizon. A short gasp escaped him.

Nearly invisible against the black of the sky, was a thin column of smoke. From the battlements, Aaron normally would not be able to tell where exactly it was coming from, but the context of the situation and the timing told him all he needed to know.

He did not spare Skylar a glance. He launched himself into a full run towards the aviary. Within minutes he was airborne, and screaming towards the remains of Aspenshire as fast as Pidgeot could fly.

So Aspenshire had been burned and burned again. Red-hot coals and bloody embers pulsed in the blackness. Anything that remained had been successfully charred into crumbling ash, bursting into piles of gray dust with the slightest touch of wind. Aaron paced around the town three times, looking for anything, anything that might have survived. Even so, he knew it was hopeless. He found no tracks, no equipment—even that had been utterly destroyed. Only a Pokemon's fire was hot enough to do something like that. There were no tracks anywhere, but on the lower boughs of trees ringing the perimeter as well as several in the direction leading back to the castle were faint scorch marks. As if something that was on fire had jumped from tree to tree to arrive there. However, the marks were barely visible, and someone who did not already suspect the culprit would not notice them. Even if pointed out, if they were skeptical, well…

What to do? He sat down on the edge of the ruined remains and closed his eyes. Slowed his breathing by breathing through his nose and releasing his breath slowly. He stretched out his aura, casting lines of energy to the millions of little stars on the dark, ghost-lit plane searching. Not surprisingly, the Infernape was gone.

He still had to go and see Maddock. He should have taken the arrow with him. Hopefully, the old healer still had it. But even with the arrow, if it did turn out to be Sandorian was not enough. Now that Skylar had gotten involved, it seemed more like a set up than anything. At this point he doubted Sandor's involvement in the first place. And if he brought up what he suspected was involvement on Skylar's part, the Royal Guardsman could respond in kind with him. Aaron had precious few allies to fall upon. Perhaps Cennar. And he was no particular power against the court's opinions.

He was alone.

But he was used to that, of course.

The moment the thought flashed across his mind though, a contrary thought collided with it. The Lucario. He knew aura. Or at least, as much as one untrained might have.

Which, honestly, was not a lot, if he remembered his own early years correctly.

The Lucario, though, was wild. He had taken it in not because he was trying to catch it.

And yet…

_Aaron, will you still have time to play with me when you get your own Pokémon?_

_Of course. We'll all play together. He'll be your friend as much as he'll be mine._

_I'd like that._

And had not it been a little Riolu, long ago, who asked him if he was lonely?

Yes. Yes, it had been. Lucario were rare. Could there be any chance that curious little creature had grown into the Lucario he found the day before?

So much for memories. Memories. Aaron opened his eyes. There may not have been human survivors to this travesty. But the Lucario had survived. Perhaps he remembered what had happened to him. Maybe if he remembered enough, Aaron would be able to piece together what happened. He leaped to his feet. If nothing else, it was worth a try. It was the only way to avoid what could very quickly devolve into war.

A sudden boom pierced the silence of sleep. The Lucario jolted awake. Amid the rustle of straw beds and squawks of surprise by the other patients in the healing hut, the healer Maddock, Clefairy and Delcatty shuffled over to the door. The door. Someone seemed to be hitting it with a fist. The Lucario blinked. Perhaps this was a normal way to indicate the desire to enter? But humans were not nocturnal. So why…?

"It's the wee hours!" Maddock snarled at the door, wrenching it open with a heavy squeak. "This had better be an emergen—oh. Lord Skylar."

The Lucario could not see the person in the doorway. Curious, he closed his eyes and tried to access the aura's plane. Since it was beyond his line of sight, he had to throw his own aura a little. The sensation was incredibly disorienting. As soon as he threw it, he was suddenly aware of his body again, and the plane cracked like ice. Frustrated, he opened his eyes, focused, and tried again. This time, he managed to detect the aura of the newcomer alongside the now-familiar auras of the three healers. It reminded him of a slow simmer. However, the bearing of the person emitting the aura was tall and emanated an authority that indicated to him that this newcomer was of a higher rank than Maddock.

"You seem surprised to see me. I thought you'd already heard."

"I have a lot of patients, a lot of work, and little time. Certainly not enough time for the gossip on one of this castle's many errants and diplomats. Now, if you'll permit me to get to the point, my lord, what do you want?"

"No one wants a conversation these days. Look, healer. I heard that my old friend Sir Aaron brought in a Pokémon. His first catch, I'm told. Is this true?"

_Catch?_ The Lucario did not like the tone of the newcomer. It reminded him of a brash young Rhyhorn mock-challenging a scarred old Rhydon. Despite the fact that it seemed apparent this Lord Skylar was more dominant than Maddock, even wild Pokémon respected age, even if they did not always value it. He was not the only one with an instant reaction. The Delcatty and Clefairy were both giving off negative emotive signals.

Maddock was slow in replying. His voice was gruff, but in his aura the Lucario detected uneasiness. Caution. "He may have."

"What is it?" the voice was quick, demanding, like a greedy Taillow chick.

Then something strange happened. Maddock's voice took on an uncharacteristic weedy tone. Hemming and hawing, his aura-outline seemed to make a show of scratching its head. "Hmmm…not sure. The name slips my mind exactly. I don't see the type much. How's your Chimchar?"

He was lying! Lying was a concept that rarely came up over the course of the Lucario's life. Simply put, there was no reason not to tell the truth of a matter because there was usually no reason to do so. In the Lucario's experience, lying tended to happen when Pokemon lived together in groups. Humans lived in groups.

Well, lying did happen, in an indirect way in the wild world. There were Pokemon with deceptive markings or behaviors to ward off predators. So, lying was mostly to protect oneself or one's offspring…or social group members.

This Lord Skylar must be an enemy of Sir Aaron. Why else would Maddock lie about something like Sir Aaron's discovery of _him?_

Lord Skylar's reply was curt. "_Monferno_ evolved into Infernape during my stay in Evariste."

"Oh, I see. My old memory's going."

"Well, perhaps if you might let me by, I might see Aaron's Pokemon for myself. Or is this typical of your manners?"

"My lord, my charges are sleeping. I don't let you pass simply because they are injured or sick, and need their rest. A stranger to them in my house would only cause a ruckus. Do you really want eleven panicked Pokemon in a small space on your hands? Of course not. You've already woken me and my assistants, but leave my patients in peace. Come again in the morning!"

Over the course of the short dialogue, the Lucario noticed that Lord Skylar's aura had simmered more and more. It reminded him of embers gently blown by a tepid wind, waiting to burst into flame.

"I shall." Lord Skylar turned and left. The Lucario lost "sight" of the aura. Again, the sensation threw him back into his body. He felt dizzy.

He heard Maddock shut the door and sigh in what sounded like relief. After a moment's silence, he heard the healer whisper something to the Delcatty.

_What is going on?_ The Lucario asked, unable to contain his curiosity any longer. Maddock rubbed his face and slumped back into his bed. The Clefairly glanced apologetically at the Lucario and approached.

_Well…_

_Your—master lied for Sir Aaron. And for me, I guess. Why? Who was that man?_

Clefairy shook her head. The gesture said that the Lucario could not understand yet. He could not help but feel a spike of indignation.

_That was Lord Skylar. The master of seven Pokemon. They are all as coldhearted and clever as he. I think…I think master lied to preserve Sir Aaron's freedom in the matter regarding you, my dear. But I think the situation right now is too big for me to understand it all, yet. Try to get some rest, will you?_

The Lucario reluctantly rested his head on the straw. But he did not sleep. His heart was pounding in his chest, as if he was looking at bridge that spanned a huge chasm. His mind spun off into speculation as he tried to listen for a break in the silence outside. What really was going to happen to him? It was weird enough being described as _someone_'s. What was this Sir Aaron really like? All these secrets and uncertainties—the more he thought about them, the more a tingling, nervous energy seemed to buzz in his limbs, discouraging sleep.

He wanted the night to _end._

The Lucario was unsure of how long he had been waiting, when he felt something flash in the eye of his aura—something brilliant, strong, and _familiar._ He would have dove into the aura's plane to try again, but he heard Maddock get up again and scramble to get the door.

The smell of ash made the Lucario flinch—the action was painful, sending a wave of agonizing protest around the flesh of his wound, but it was overlaid with the heavy scent of the woods and feathers. It was coming from the brilliant aura. Was this—could this be…?

"Aaron! Come in, hurry up."

Sir Aaron. The Lucario opened his eyes. They widened in shock. He did know this person from somewhere. He knew this _aura_. In the annals of his memory, he had met this person. In the dim light of the little candle that Maddock lit, he noticed the eyes. Cave-pool eyes that were deeper than darkness itself. An aura like his and his mother's. The scent of feathers, that staff—

This was the one who had saved him from the Hariyama. The one who had triggered an evolution and the attack by the Regirock. _This _was Sir Aaron?

Suddenly, speaking to him seemed a much more daunting task than before. He owed much, much more than just his life to this human.

"Skylar came. I don't know what the bastard wanted, but I knew it couldn't be good. I covered for you this once, but he'll be back in the morning. I don't want to get dragged into another one of your misadventures, understand? Figure out what you're going do to with that Pokémon and get out of my hair."

"Thank you. This will be the last night I trouble you with this particular matter. Believe me…" the aura-human leaned back in his chair, causing it to creak a little. "I did not want it to end up like this. The Lucario. How is he?"

"He is recovering. He is healing quickly, but he hasn't moved much. What do you have in mind?"

A frown ghosted over Sir Aaron's face. He sighed. "I may then have to come back…" he leaned forward, placing his fist underneath his chin. He looked worried. "Skylar will be back in the morning you say?"

The Lucario, in a moment of weakness, pressed himself closer to his bed of hay. For a moment, he wished he was asleep. What could he say to this human? He had wanted to speak with him since learning of Sir Aaron's role in saving his life, but now, he felt unbelievably callow, small, and above all—a strange, horrible feeling—_unworthy_. He was a wild Pokémon.

But what a cowardly feeling! A sudden rise of self-disgust purged the feeling like flame.

Aaron stood.

Forcing himself, he sat up, ignoring the pain of his healing wound.

_No—wait. If…_the Lucario was unsure of how to speak to him. Surely in a deferential manner. He rarely had done so in the wild. He was stronger than most Pokemon he usually came across. He was a flesh-eater, after all. If he did encounter something stronger, the usual response was to run away. How had Maddock spoken to Skylar? His language had changed; even if he had not been completely sincere…he stumbled a little over his thoughts, feeling stupider by the minute for doing so. _If it is convenient for Sir Aaron, I will speak._

Sir Aaron turned to look at him. Something flickered in his eye. Recognition? Surprise? _Humor? _The tiniest of smiles twitched around his mouth. The Lucario blinked. What was so funny? The way he was talking? Immediately he felt like a fool. The smile was gone in a heartbeat, and the serious demeanor shadowed Sir Aaron's face once again.

But maybe there was no recognition there. Had Sir Aaron forgotten him? Perhaps. Human lives were tangled complicated. More tangled than the life of a wild Pokémon. It was not unsurprising, really. But the sharp—surprising?—tang of disappointment welled like a bitter flower underneath his tongue.

"So you may. Maddock, if you will," he looked at the door. "I am afraid I will not be doing this brave fellow many favors."

Haven't you? The Lucario thought, a little bitterly.

Maddock's face was scrunched in annoyance. But he shrugged at last. "Fine. I'll knock if a certain unpleasant someone returns. Wouldn't be out of character…come on. Delcatty, Clefairy."

The door closed with a firm thud.

There was brief silence. Sir Aaron sat down in front of the Lucario, who, by contrast stiffened. They were almost at eye level. The Lucario did not like it. Come to think of it, he had never exactly stared into a human's eyes before, and the experience was…disconcerting. It was as if there was something besides just soul and instinct there, something bright. Something…frightening. The Lucario blinked, focusing instead on a spot right above Sir Aaron's head. If the human noticed, he did not comment.

"I needn't have worried about you, Lucario. It is nice to see you doing well."

_I…have you to thank for that. So…Sir Aaron. Is what everyone calls you?_

Humans had individual monikers. But sometimes, he knew that they would be called by "titles", not just the natural ones like _mother_, _father, brother, _or _sister_. The Houndour had told him about titles that indicated more than just family ties, but the Lucario, then Riolu, had not really understood then. It just got confusing when he heard humans call old males wearing heavy robes _father_ even when there was no biological ties.

Sir Aaron gave a wry smile. He took off his hat. "Only those who like me."

The Lucario found himself mimicking the gesture. A little smile. It was like a knot in his heart was loosening.

"Lucario, I must ask you to do me a favor."

_I owe you my life. _And more… _What can I do?_

Aaron made a dismissive gesture. "Don't dwell on that, my friend. Now…forgive me for asking you this, but I need you to try and remember the day of your escape and the details of thereof. When, why, where, how. Don't leave anything out. The most insignificant detail may be crucial."

…_Why?_ There had been nothing good to remember about that day. Nothing but horror.

Aaron's face was stone. "In order to prevent a war."

The Lucario's eyes widened. Visions of the very war he had encountered sparked in his mind like bolts of lightning: dead, broken bodies, stale purple blood, human, Pokemon, man, woman, child, all burning. The scarred face of the destroyer and his Donphan, his blazing, bloody socket when the Lucario had taken his eye…_ "Death and glory"_ he had said.

He could not let that happen again, if it was at all in his power.

With only a short hesitation, born of his lack of clever words than anything else, he began his story. He started with the encounter of the dead Absol. Sir Aaron listened carefully, occionally encouraging the Lucario with a gesture, but otherwise did not interrupt—until the Lucario described the Donphan riders.

"Donphan? Twelve of them…what did their leader look like?"

_They had covered their faces and were wearing green rags over their armor. He was larger than the others. I took his eye in battle. His aura…it was small, dappled. Like a creek, how it froths if it finds a boulder in its way._

"You saw his _aura?"_

_I used to call it 'waves'. But yes, this is something all my kind can do. I—I am afraid I do not know how to use it well. I—_did not train in its use like my mother, alone in the mountains, he thought, but instead he said—_am not skilled in its use. I can do little more than sense it._

Aaron looked down. He seemed pensive. But at last, he asked the Lucario to continue. The Lucario was unsure of what to make of the exchange.

As he described the destroyer, he noticed that Aaron—whose aura was very easy to read at this close range—was emitting tense pulses. He was not afraid, more like…concerned. However, his body gave no indication of anxiety at all, instead, encouraging the Lucario to continue.

The interview finally came to a conclusion with the Lucario's description of his escape into the river. There was a brief silence that followed. It gave the Lucario the impression of a torrent of water filling a dry riverbed for some reason.

The Lucario was honestly surprised at his own memory. It seemed shockingly well-intact. Maybe it was being around all these humans, but he knew from experience that a Pokemon's memory wasn't even comparable to that of a human. So why? Was he that much changed?

On another note…why hasn't he recognized me yet? The Lucario thought. He did not want to bring it up. What if Sir Aaron had recognized him, but chose not to acknowledge it…but why would he do that, if that was the case indeed?

Sir Aaron reached out and patted the Lucario on the head. The Lucario started. He had not been touched by a human since…since…a little boy, from a very long time ago.

"Thank you, Lucario. With luck, your story may save lives. Now, all I ask of you now is that you recover. When you are healed, you are free to do as you wish."

Do as he _wished?_

The Lucario looked down, his eyes unfocused. That's right. He was here. Well, not at his birthplace, but near humans. That had been what he really wanted, right?

A life beyond mere survival.

That was what humans had.

That was what the _Aura Guardians_ had.

In his musings, he barely noticed that Sir Aaron had stood up and was heading for the door. Panic surged in him like a cold current; like it might wash away the only thing he had ever truly wanted—as if that thing was as fragile as marks in the sand.

_Wait!_

Sir Aaron turned around. There was a strange expression on his face. A twist of surprise pulled his eyebrows up, a small pinprick of what looked like hope lit his eyes. He looked like he was looking at something he could not believe was there.

The Lucario's thoughts were clumsy, bolstered by a desperate energy. _I left the World Tree. There was nothing for me there. A Lucario is a solitary creature, but strength in the wilderness could not fill the gap within me. I—grew up near humans. I have learned—changed enough to know that I cannot live in that world anymore. Even though someone…someone…someone told me that aura connected all living things. But that not everyone had access to it._

_I came in search of something more than just survival._

He was confusing himself with his own thoughts. These were not the thoughts of a wild Pokemon. They could not be. They did not make sense, they were not clear.

This human had saved him three times. Evolved him, even. He had been a guiding spirit in the Lucario's life. For the first time, he thought that instead of stars, burning solitary and bright, but like a web. Running between each and everything, connecting them all: threads of the soul that had in the end connected him to this other aura-user.

He dared to look Sir Aaron in the eye. _Now, _there was recognition. Now—

A frantic knocking on the door snapped the atmosphere like brittle ice. A frantic knocking, muffled shouts.

"Let me in! I must speak with Sir Aaron, it's urgent!'

"No! Back off, Cennar, you twit!"

Aaron wrenched the door open, the Lucario lunged to his feet only to remember his wound. A tangled heap of man and Pokemon stumbled into the house and crashed to the ground.

A small, thin, gray-haired human was pinned to the ground beneath Maddock and his Pokemon. He was young, like Sir Aaron. However, he was weedy and panicked. He reminded the Lucario of the runt of a Houndoom litter.

"Sir Cennar?" Sir Aaron helped the runty one up to his feet. "What is the matter?"

"Sir Aaron! There's been an attack on the Larkspur estate!"

The ripples of fear poured off Sir Aaron's aura like head from a candle. His pupils shrank in his eyes. In the dim light, the Lucario saw sweat bead at his forehead. He heard one word. Or was it a name.

"Rin…"

"By the time we got the news by this messenger, the battle was long over, and they're holding council about it right now! I think they're going to go to war, they think Sandor did it but I knew I had to come and get you because no one else was going to, oh God I hope you have some good evidence— ''

Sir Cennar's babble seemed to fade away as the Lucario looked to Sir Aaron. The Aura Guardian had turned his face away, gotten control again. The Lucario could not see his eyes as he repositioned his hat.

"Lucario."

_Yes?_

"I have one more favor to ask of you. Are you strong enough to tell your story again? This time, it will be in front of the rulers of this land. I understand if you cannot."

"Sir Aaron, is that a new Pokemon? Oh my God! That's a Luc—"

"Will you shut up?" Maddock snapped.

Lucario paid none of them any attention. Speaking in front of rulers? He could barely speak in front of these humans. But Sir Aaron was asking. It was to prevent _war._

This was not a matter of choice.

_Take me to them, Sir Aaron. I will._


	7. Outsider

Disclaimer: Obviously, I don't own Pokémon.

_Outsider_

_© DeskRage, 2010_

_Threads of the Soul_

Aaron would have run to the meeting hall. However, Lucario in his injured state could not manage more than a shuffling, painful-looking trot. Cennar used the extra time it was taking them to inform Aaron of the situation as best he could. The Lord and Lady Larkspur, the Lady Rin and their servants—for the most part anyway—were safe. But several retainers had been killed, along with a few of the peasants who worked and lived on the estate. At least one of the fields was on fire, and the gates had been badly damaged before a belated defense force of other travelling Royal Knights on their way to Cameran Palace finally managed to run the attackers off.

Good. That meant Rin was safe.

Relief. The first thing in his soul when he heard this news…he was disgusted with himself, but on another level, he was not sure if he wanted to feel anything different.

But enough of that…Royal Knights travelling in a big group just happened upon the attack on their way home? Aaron frowned. Surely at least some of them would have recognized the attackers, or at least their style?

They approached the last stretch of the meeting hall. Lucario stumbled, but managed to right himself before he fell. Aaron halted in his swift walk and waited, watching. Cennar clucked nervously and offered to carry Lucario the rest of the way, but the Pokémon shook his head.

_We are going to go before your rulers to…convince them of a position. I must not appear weak._

Even as he said these things, he met Aaron's eyes for a moment. There was gratitude there for the small respect paid to dignity.

Even as they approached the doors of the hall, Aaron could hear Skylar's voice through the heavy wood.

"My lands have been attacked, not in a dissimilar fashion to the recent destruction of Aspenshire. It is too much of a coincidence in terms of the location—the very fact that our beloved Princess is staying there; it's proximity to the capital and manner of the attack. San—"

Aaron allowed his frustration to seep through the cracks of his composure long enough to bash the doors open with enough force that the sound drowned out the last part of Skylar's sentence. His attending Pokemon, the Luxray and the Infernape bared their teeth at the intrusion. The Lucario made an instinctive-looking gesture, as if he was going to bare his teeth back, but Aaron noticed that his jaw muscles clamped together hard, and he simply turned to follow Aaron.

The council—mostly high ranking Royal Knights, Commander Rio, Nath and several other officers as well as the chamberlain stood assembled around the chamber. He strode forward and issued a deep bow directed at the King and the Crown Prince. He noted that the Lucario mimed him.

"Your majesties, please hear me…"

"Well, you decided to grace us with your presence at last, Sir Aaron," Commander Rio growled, cutting him off.

"And what, pray tell, is that?" Nath's curiosity glassed over the irritation in his voice, like a thin film of grease shining on the surface of a cup of soup.

Out of the corner of Aaron's perception, he noticed Skylar's aura. It was still and bright with satisfaction. Aaron steeled himself, but spoke in a tone that flowed as easily as silk. He had to.

"This is Lucario, my Pokémon. The only survivor and witness of the Aspenshire massacre."

This news was met with a silence that reminded Aaron of the stillness of the earth after a roaring landslide. Others might have gasped in surprise, or even fallen into excited mutterings, but these were mostly battle-hardened officers, fighters, and jaded politicians. But even then, there was a stiffness in Captain Rio's neck, the Crown Prince's eyebrows were raised almost imperceptibly, the King's gnarled fingers had folded under his whiskery chin. There was tightness around Nath's mouth, but his eyes crinkled in the strangest mixture of triumph and surprise.

Lucario's aura gave of shuddered, like a candle in the wind. Aaron could tell he was sensing the scrutiny of the Luxray and Infernape as much as the humans in the room.

One of the Royal Knights, the Duke of Margham cleared his throat. "That's all well and good, Sir Aaron, but your new acquisition has little or nothing to do with the present situation. Now if you'll be so kind, sit down so we can proceed."

Aaron did not move.

"Pardon me to say, your grace, but I think you'll find it does."

"So Sir Aaron has a Pokémon that supposedly survived the massacre. What are you trying to say with that? You're not still on about the possibility of it not being a Sandorian attack. The little evidence we have points squarely in their direction. They are also the only ones with any kind of motivation—"

"Allow him to speak."

All heads turned in the direction of the Crown Prince, who'd issued the order. His face was impassive. "Sir Aaron, if you please."

"Thank you, your majesty, but it is less about what I have to say and more about what Lucario does." Before any startled words could be uttered Aaron stood slightly to the left and gestured with his staff towards the Pokémon. "Lucario."

Lucario moved unflinchingly towards the spot Aaron had indicated. In a slightly startling display of adaption, or maybe perhaps instinct, the Pokémon bowed again to the King. The gesture was painful—Aaron only knew that because of the flinching of Lucario's aura. It was hard to admit, but he was surprised by the creature's fortitude.

_Everyone…allow me to report my experience and the attack on Aspenshire._

And yet, he really should not have been. Lucario had survived a hazardous journey from the Tree of Beginning and a vicious attack in search of something no Pokémon he had ever heard of would look for. He could not stop a tiny, shadow smile from working across his mouth.

Lucario told his tale almost exactly as he had recounted it to Aaron. Although this time, he noticed that the Pokémon seemed to be speaking very carefully, almost slowly…_because he was trying to replicate Aaron's humble form of speech._ Now this was surprising. When he had spoken to the Lucario, he had been polite, as always, and respectful. But when speaking to the King and Crown Prince, he would change his speech into a more humble pattern.

Any thought that Lucario might only be slightly smarter—no, more human in his thought—than the average Pokémon promptly flew out the window.

"How is it able to talk?" a younger officer—Aaron did not recognize him—spluttered. "Is it a Psychic? Was it taught to speak?"

_That is not correct,_ the Lucario supplied in the midst of his story. _Speaking with aura is…natural to me._

Natural. The phrase was like a hook into Aaron's mind, distracting him from the present and dragging him forcefully into the past. Suddenly he was with his master again, staring into his shadowed face as if from a great height. He was seven years old again.

"_Remember Aaron. The aura is always with you. Whatever anyone might say, whatever blueblood brats or dirt-veined farmers say to the contrary, this aura is always with you. It is your birthright to learn how to trust it."_

For some reason though, it seemed to Aaron as the memory faded, that aura was not so much his own birthright, but that of Lucario. After all, from what he had seen so far, from what he sensed every time he met with one of the creatures, there was always a notion that any aura he was able to tap into, which was often considerable and profound, was not the _same_ or as much of a birthright as it was for them.

Natural to him. Birthright…

By now, the Lucario had concluded his story. There was a brief silence that hung over the company like an axe over an outstretched neck.

Finally, Skylar snapped it.

"As fascinating a story. However, it is entirely inconclusive. Masked men come and raze a town on a company of Donphan. Both Evariste, Sandor, and bandits have access to Donphan."

"Twelve fully evolved Donphan? Doesn't sound likely…"

"Why Donphan?"

"It seems to me, that in light of Lucario's testimony, there is no conclusive evidence either way. Which is why I posit that we must be very careful in our next move." Aaron spoke in the direction of the royals.

Skylar's lip curled. "So what would you have us do? We are still at the same spot that we were, and the evidence still stands that Sandor is the most likely culprit."

"What evidence, pray tell?"

"Their motivation. Sandor sees us as a growing threat. Our ambassadors have already noted such, have they not?"

"They say similar things of Evariste."

"I was just in Evariste. They think nothing of the sort. Highness," Skylar turned to address the king. "Might we not send to the Evaristian court and speak to them of these attacks? It is not unlikely that they have experienced attacks as well."

The king spoke at last. "What do you mean, Sir Skylar?"

Skylar inhaled and squared his shoulders. The same way he always did when he thought he was about to win an argument.

"Invite them over, your majesty. Let us come together for a few days of sport and levity to make it worth their while, and then talk at length of these distressing matters before coming to an agreement."

Aaron could see where this was going. At the exact moment he did though, he saw his chance. Carefully masking his emotions, he spoke.

"You're talking about a tournament."

"Indeed, I am." Skylar still did not meet Aaron's eyes, still looking in the royal's direction.

"Tournaments are expensive!" cried Wilfred, the senior chamberlain. "We don't have the funds to waste on such trivialities!"

"Parties and tournaments are excellent fronts for politics," Nath grumbled.

"This sounds intriguing," the king said, "but he is right. I know your love of the ring, Sir Skylar, and we all know that such a strategy has proved useful in ages past. Perhaps it is time to extend the hand of formal alliance. But, Wilfred is right. We must be very careful in weighing the benefits of such a move."

"Then why don't we make it worth everyone's while," Aaron suggested, "and invite Sandor as well?"

The startled sound he got as a reaction irritated him, but he did not show it. Were they all so convinced by Skylar's words and accusations that it was Sandor?

"What are you saying?" Captain Rio growled.

"I see," the Crown Prince said. "A chance for all three nations to come together on a neutral ground, as we have not chosen sides in the larger conflict."

"In addition, your majesty," Aaron said, "if the culprits are Sandorian, they will likely show up at the tournament. This will give us the opportunities to discuss our grievances."

"The chances of us making a formal alliance with Evariste are slim to none if we invite Sandor. Aren't you missing the point, Sir Aaron?" Skylar asked with a small, hard smile on his face.

Aaron could not resist a smile in return. "Not at all. This way, each nation can challenge the other directly for the validity of our claims. If the evidence and testimony does not line up, then Providence reveals the truth in the form of a match, as per ancient custom."

"That is easy to say for someone who has little to lose, Sir Aaron," the Duke of Margham spoke again. His eyes were cold.

Aaron blinked. "I am not sure what you mean by that, your grace."

"If I recall correctly, Lucario are the Pokemon of bluebloods. In some regions, they breed them specifically for the protection of their kings. I did not mention this earlier, in order to maintain politeness, but now seems appropriate to bring it up."

_What? _Lucario's reaction, soft and confused as it was, went largely unnoticed.

_Be calm, _Aaron urged silently. But of course, Lucario could not hear his thoughts. At the same time, he was furious with the Duke. Margham was a stiff traditionalist to be sure, but this was ridiculous.

"Preposterous!" Nath snarled.

"Is it?" Skylar's voice was tinged with amusement.

Aaron's words were stiff, like frozen tree bark. "I am afraid you will find very little on the subject of Lucario."

"Enough of this!" the Crown Prince said. "This is utterly irrelevant to this discussion. Now, the tournament. Sir Aaron is correct, we cannot act in haste."

"My lands have been razed. My men have died defending not just my family, but your majesty's royal sister, the Princess. If not for the Royal Knights that happened to come across the attack, we might not be able to discuss them in the present tense, your majesty. Do I not have a right to satisfaction?" Anyone else might have been flustered, angry. Skylar's voice was low and cold, like heavy winter water pushing out of a crack in otherwise solid ice.

The Crown Prince responded flatly, "You do. You may exercise it at the tournament."

"Your majesty," Wilfred stammered again, "This will be quite the expensive endeavor. Who will sponsor—"

"You all forget, we are taking a lot of chances," Skylar interrupted. "We are still making the assumption that the culprit will come. And even if he does, then what?"

_I took his eye._ Lucario said. _How many one-eyed male Dophan-riders can there be?_

The Infernape bared its teeth and made a strange laughing noise. Skylar gave it a look that subdued the expression before turning to Aaron.

"More than your Pokemon might think, Sir Aaron."

"You forget he is an aura user, like me. However, unlike me, he has other talents." Lucario had descried to him what the man's aura had looked like. Specific little details, nuances, that Aaron himself had never been able to sense. That indicated to him that the Lucario had a sense for differentiating auras…so he took the chance. "Lucario, can you recognize individual auras? Would you be able to recognize the man if you saw him again."

There was no hesitation in the Pokemon's voice, even if there was a tiny pause in the fire of his aura.

_Yes, sir._

"It is decided, then. We shall have a tournament. God willing we come to a peaceful conclusion, and if nothing else, the truth of these matters." The king said.

"Train hard," the Crown Prince added. "We need not show our full army's strength, but let them know that we are small, but capable. Dismissed."

Aaron, with Lucario in tow, made as quick an exit as possible. Aaron knew that it was tonight that he would have to deal with Nath. It would be impossible, and ridiculous to attempt to put it off any longer. However, what he did not want was for the clearly exhausted Lucario to have to deal with the man as well. To avoid the predictability, instead of returning straight to Maddock's house to deliver Lucario, they walked a short distance into the woods.

There were several spots that Aaron would frequent just to give himself a little time to think, surrounded by nature and gentle wavelengths of flowing aura. Out here, the hard, heavy smells of stained stone and fabric were replaced by the clear amber fragrance of the woods and light air. The wind felt freer, teasing its long cold fingers through Aaron's hair and collar. He glanced at the Lucario. He had still not allowed himself to limp, but he had looked up, a million silver stars reflecting in the Pokémon's red eyes.

He looked tired. Nervous, too.

"Relax, Lucario. You have done me a great service. Thank you."

_It was nothing. I cannot begin to repay my debt to you._

Aaron noticed that Lucario's humble speech patterns had not changed back. He thought about telling him the switch was not necessary, but decided instead to say nothing. Once Lucario was more comfortable with the forms of human speech, he might very well choose another to better express himself.

Aaron finally sat down on a tall boulder. It was a large granite block that slightly resembled the shoulders of some giant primordial Rhyhorn trying to shove its way from beneath the earth. Sharp clusters of glowing blue hadite flowered in and around the boulder, casting an ethereal light. Lucario hesitated a moment.

"Go ahead and sit. You look very tired."

_If you say so._

Lucario sat. Aaron took a moment to study him. Even though he was sitting, there was a stiffness to Lucario's fur and ears, an uneasy ripple in the waves his aura gave off. There had been plenty of things in the council meeting that he surely did not understand at this point in time. Aaron was trying to think of words that would reassure him when Lucairo surprised him by speaking first.

_Sir Aaron, what will happen to me now?_

Aaron blinked. "You will return to Maddock until you recover. After that…" Aaron tipped his head up to look at the stars. "You will come and live by my side."

Lucario turned to face him. The strangest thing, Lucario was smiling. It was a strange expression to see on someone so unmistakably inhuman, Aaron almost laughed.

_Yes, Sir Aaron._

Aaron found himself saluting Lucario, in the manner of Aura Guardians—touching a closed left fist to the right shoulder. For a moment he wondered if he was channeling his old master from long ago.

His master.

And then, that shadowy image of what _he himself_ had been like, all those years ago.

He looked at the Lucario. He'd had talent, sure, like Lucario. But knowledge? Little.

"Lucario, your aura. What do you know if it?"

_Know of it…? For me, Sir Aaron, it just…is. I can throw it a little to "see" beyond my body. Using it in battle is more difficult. I cannot always do it. I can see them, as you know. I-I'm sorry. I know very little._

"Don't apologize." It was kind of a stupid question, if he was honest with himself.

But it did tell him a few things. Here was an Aura user without a teacher, like he himself had been as a child. Here was a creature with potential, and will. A fellow.

He smiled to himself. How unorthodox was it for him to be even considering teaching Lucario as Aaron himself had been taught in the ways of aura?

But it was the best—the only way to do it.

"Lucario, I know you must have a lot of questions about the happenings of tonight. But I ask you to put them aside for now and regain your strength. You will need it, and so will I."

He left the Lucario with Maddock. After telling the healer of his plans for the Pokemon and thanking him and his assistants profusely for all of their efforts, he left.

He had several other people to thank as well. And others…well. He cringed inwardly and shook himself for being such a coward. Best to figure out where Nath was and deal with him last, that way it would be more plausible to leave with the situation in his favor.

Aaron was so focused on sorting out his plans for the rest of the evening he did not notice the Sandslash's aura until the thing was nearly on top of him. Or rather, right beneath his feet. He staggered backwards, using his staff to break a fall that might have otherwise been embarrassing.

Nath's Sandlash, a heavily scared old male with a damaged right eye spun out from the ground and with a low rumbling of earth. It flared its spines and shook the dirt off its shoulders before fixing Aaron with a stern one-eyed stare. Aaron held his hands up in a gesture of surrender, a wry smile on his face.

"All right. Understood. I guess we'll wait here, then."

In less than two minutes Nath came upon them. His expression was just as confusing at is had been when Aaron had first walked in with the Lucario. Triumphant, confused, annoyed—it was all there in his mashed up expression.

"There you are! Good work, Sandslash. Now, as for you!" Aaron turned to face Nath.

"Commander," he greeted him.

"Enough of the formalities. So, you've finally caught a Pokemon? A Lucario, no less. Excellent work. I don't care what that Maghram says, you've every right to the thing's life. That's the one you saved, right?" his voice took on a hard edge. He was not going to ask why Aaron had not mentioned it. Aaron could see in the sudden shift in his eyes that he did not feel the need to verbally communicate how betrayed he had felt as a result. Perhaps the result had pleased him enough to leave off.

"It is."

"So, then, you really do intend to keep it. Now that you have a Pokemon that you can legitimately claim as your own, my suggestion stands."

Aaron sighed. "Commander, I am afraid my answer is still no."

"_Why?"_ the Commander folded his arms and furrowed his brows.

"If anything, my independent status as an Aura Guardian is strengthened by the acquisition of a Pokemon. However," he continued even as Nath opened his mouth, "before you make the claim that the Aura Guardians number only one, allow me to say that now, there are two."

"Two?" Nath's eyes widened. "Surely you can't mean…"

"I do. He is an aura user, just like me. Training is just a matter of teaching as you know. I know one way to teach a fellow aura user, and that method is the way I was taught by my master."

"A Pokemon…student."

"Exactly."

Nath was shaking his head. "Aaron, no one will take you seriously."

"I find that they will. In any case, other's opinion of me cannot fall too much lower in regards to doing things outside the norm."

"But you hold fast to old customs by maintaining independent status as an Aura Guardian. What if there was a way to be both an Aura Guardian and a Pokemon Knight, Aaron? I ask you not just as your commander, but as a friend. The ranks would be open, the people would love it. So why not?"

Aaron tipped his hat back. "Perhaps in some ways I am a traditionalist as well."

Nath's jaw worked and he was breathing slowly through his nose. His aura was flickering with irritation.

"We are still allies. You are a great friend to me, Commander. But I am afraid on this issue I stand fast. Now, I am afraid I must bid you good evening."

"So I take it that when you register for the tournament you will register as an Aura Guardian."

Assumptions again. "I may not take part for that very reason, Nath. I have no particular love for the ring."

Nath had not been truly angry before. But now, his eyes narrowed. As if on cue the Sandslash bristled.

"There you go too far in evading responsibility, Aaron. You have a duty to your country to enter, and I will be damned if I let you slink off from that. You know you are strong. I remember your first tournament with a Pokemon that wasn't even yours. Don't think for a second that that strength won't be needed when we compete with foreign powers!

Enter as an Aura Guardian! But you enter. You understand?"

Aaron bristled almost imperceptibly. "It is not my own welfare alone that I have to consider, now."

"Oho, so it's the Lucario's now, right?"

"If the tournament was going to be held in a year, I would be considering it. I would not lose Lucario to a different trainer at this stage."

"But you would risk another's?"

Aaron was silent.

"Think about it," Nath growled at him. He turned and stomped away.

He needed iron. It was one thing for him to be resting and recovering like he was, that was fine. But the food he'd been given so far—being _given_ food was weird, he was not yet sure if he could get used to it—while good did not contain any raw iron ore. He did not want to make any more of his needs evident to his caretakers, while either out of stubbornness, instinct, embarrassment, or some combination of all three, he was not quite sure. Regardless, the amount of blood he had lost combined with his already well-established need for it in his diet drove him to leave the confines of the healing hut in the night. The bones in his paws ached as if someone was pushing his spikes in, and the skin around them was sore. Worse were his chest and teeth, leaving both the heavy bone and his gums feeling tender like melting ice.

And Sir Aaron had said he would need his strength.

He had managed to sneak out of the cottage because the window was open and the Clefairy was sound asleep. He did not know where Maddock and Delcatty were. Besides, he told himself. He would not go far. It was not like he could anyway.

He contented himself with going to the rocky edge of the palisade. The air was heavy with the smell of iron and—something more refined, but definitely ore. Steel, he remembered it was called. His mouth watered just at its cold, metallic scent.

It was not long before his aching paws were muddy and crusted with dust. He had not expected to find too much—this earth had been beaten of its ore some time ago it seemed. However, there were some trace elements of the stuff in some of the pebbles he found. As he rasped his tongue over some of the richer rocks he found, he found his mind had flown straight back to his current situation, whatever Sir Aaron had asked.

All this about a tournament. Sir Aaron had told him it was a series of fights to determine who was the strongest, among other explanations of "politics". To Lucario's mind it just seemed like highly ritualized power play, except that humans also did it with their words instead of just their raw strength. It was not a concept that Lucario found terribly unfamiliar. After all, wild Pokémon engaged in such things all the time naturally. He was not surprised to find the practice among humans, and even less so to find that it was highly sophisticated in some ways.

But in others, it was no different than a wild battle for dominance of practice.

Wild battles.

Lucario sat down and looked up around him. This great human structure, build from the land around it was awesome indeed, especially when considering it was built by their hands. Torches flickered in the night, clumps of hadite jutted out of almost every surface, and still overhead was the carpet of stars and the impassive moon.

Was it really that different from the World Tree? Wait, the humans called it the Tree of Beginning. Yes. The Tree of Beginning.

He had yet to meet many of the other Pokemon of this world, and learn all its rules. But part of what made him unafraid he thought, was that he was not here for no reason.

"_This is my Pokémon, Lucario."_

"_I will need your strength."_

Sir Aaron's words reverberated over and over in Lucario's mind. He had a purpose now, clear and bright in his mind as the hadite that lit this castle. Despite the pain in his body, the heaviness of the spikes on his paws and chest, he suddenly felt like he was made of air.

_And you are my master, _Lucario thought.

He was struggling to crack open another rock with his sore teeth when a swift aura flew towards him like an angry bird. Reflexively, he leaped to his feet, his fur bristling and his eyes sharp.

"_So you can speak to the humans."_

Though the Luxray seemed to melt out of the darkness, Lucario saw his aura coming from several yards away, bright and naked in the blackness of its plane. Every step the other took bespoke hostility, the curve of its lips to reveal gleaming teeth, its steel eyes and the energy in its movement.

In universal language, the word he spoke was _enemy_.

And this creature's master, Sir Skylar, was Sir Aaron's enemy, too. He had felt it, seen it in the room.

Lucario did not reply, instead meeting the newcomer's glare head on with his own. There was a pregnant pause. The Luxray stretched, yawning languidly and showing its vicious teeth. Then, he sat down, curling his tail around his paws.

"_Have you spoken for anyone other than yourself?" _the tone of the question changed. Lucario had been expecting confidence, perhaps even mocking. But even the eyes had shifted. His aura, which could only be described as smoldering, suddenly twitched and opened up, as if exposing a vulnerable spot. Lucario cocked his ears in confusion.

_What?_

Before the Luxray could answer, another burning shape sauntered out the shadows. Except this creature could not hide in any darkness ever—its very being bespoke that shadows would only make it brighter. The Infernape's movements were confident and swift, and the trail of flame on his head bespoke an authority that even the most arrogant of Tyranitars would have to envy.

At his approach, the Lucario noticed that the Luxray seemed to shrink visibly with a hiss. The sight reminded him incongruously of a squashed fruit, hissing in protest as it was deflated. So, the Infernape was the dominant here. Very well.

Or perhaps not…

The Infernape did not even look at the Luxray as he shouldered him aside, facing Lucario head on.

"_You…" _the Infernape's voice was low, and he spoke slowly, in the manner of one who was used to being listened to carefully and obeyed, _"do not belong here. This world…is not yours."_

_This_ is_ my world now. _Lucario replied. In retrospect, it always had been.

"_Is that so? Well." _In a burst of flame and movement, the Infernape nearly closed the gap between them in the blink of an eye. Lucario thought he had seen him coming a second before he actually did—the result was a clumsy swipe that did not connect and nearly sent him flat on his face. The Infernape reappeared behind him. The Lucario growled and spun to his feet. He had experienced that before. He'd anticipated the attack too much—why?

"_I was not going to strike. If I wanted to, you would be dead now."_

The Lucario hopped back to gain space between them. His wound had reopened, but he refused to limp. He stood his ground, glowering. The Infernape appeared relaxed, speaking in the same tone as he continued. _"You know well that in the wild, one such as you would never fight me."_

He was right. Lucario had never encountered an Infernape personally, but he knew two things from both instinct and his mother's warnings. Things that fought with the earth must be avoided. Similarly, those who fought primarily with fire as their aid were to be treated with caution. Infernape, he could see, was both. His typing alone made Lucario vulnerable. If he had ever encountered him in the wild, unless he was defending offspring, mate or parent, he would have surely avoided conflict with it.

"_If you stay here…the chances are high that you may have to do just that."_

The implication was more powerful than the Infernape's words.

_I am not going anywhere._

The Infernape shrugged. _"Very well. But let me leave you with a warning. The world of men,"_ he gestured briefly to their surroundings, "_is not like the world of Mew."_

The Infernape gestured to the Luxray. Both of them turned their backs and loped away.

Lucario watched them go. Confusion, embarrassment and fury raged in his guts. The confusion he could understand on an intellectual level. After all, a wild encounter like that, threatening violence, would have normally culminated in a battle. He was not used to that sort of lead up with no result, he could understand that. The embarrassment part was new. He was not used to feeling embarrassed either, because it required a sense of self-consciousness that Lucario had not experienced since…since speaking with the mad Kadabra. Embarrassment—because he knew that right then, the Infernape would have won.

But the Infernape had threatened him with death.

_That_ was unusual no matter how you looked at it.

Battles in the wild rarely resulted in death. Especially tests of strength. Usually the winner would leave the loser unconscious or simply drive him away. Rarely did it come to the death.

The war scene pushed into his mind's eye again. He pushed it away distractedly. Men killed each other, and they treated it as an outrage, but not as anything new. Was that perhaps the case with Pokémon battles in the human world, too?

No, that could not be. He would have heard about that, if that had been the case, right?

And even if it was…Lucario stood up and squared his shoulders to the sky. Let the conflict come. Conflict was the state of all things. But now that he had a reason to fight, it did not matter.

This was his world now.

_Final Notes: There are a couple of tricky things about Lucario's speech. I tried to allude to the different levels of speech here, because I think it is important to the character's personalities and representations, something that was unfortunately lost in the movie's translation to English. However, this does not become inconsistent because in medieval times, depending on which period you're talking, there were different levels of speech in both Old, Middle and even some [late] Modern English. However, for accessibility's sake, I didn't want to cram in a bunch of 'thees' and 'thous'. And then to even further complicate matters, since this takes place in the Pokemon world, which is obviously largely modeled on Japan itself, there is even further confusion because it is blindingly obvious that the design for Cameran is medieval European. Or, I guess if you want to get technical, it's modeled after a fairly modern castle that was made to look like a fairy tale palace. But that's digressing._

_Along the same lines, Yamina_chan mentioned something about the Romanization of Rin's (and others by extention). I will be using the official—or as official as I can find—Romanization, not because I like them better, but for consistency's sake. I really don't like putting in Japanese stock phrases in where I know they go, i.e. the honorifics, the "hai"s, etc because it makes it look kind of sloppy. English is English, Japanese is Japanese. It is more consistent when you keep it that way._

_However, thank you guys so much for the feedback. It keeps me on my toes and makes sure I don't do anything particularly dumb. And if I have made mistakes or if you have opinions, anything ranging from typos to technicalities to errors in research and whatnot, please don't hesitate to let me know._

_A final note…sheesh. These massive author's notes are getting too big and fat._


	8. Student

Disclaimer: Obviously, I don't own Pokemon.

A/N: This chapter was hard to write, just because on top of everything else, I did a bunch of research on philosophies and constants like chi/ki/qi, reiki, prana, energia, etan vital, etc., because I had to build the philosophy surrounding the Aura from the ground up (since in the source material, it is barely touched upon.) This is made a whole lot more complicated because of the obviously Japanese-ness of the whole thing given the movie's origins—obviously aura is based on ki—and the additional medieval European setting. Which is why etan vital and energia are in that list of researched item, as well as medieval alchemy. But in that vein, Aura Guardians didn't just strike me as warrior poets. In line with the western aspect of their being, aura always struck me as being a fusion of a philosophy _and_ a science. And now with Lucario added to the mix, and the fact that Aaron and his predecessors (and later, characters like Riley have obviously been able to utilize some form of aura, perhaps not for fighting directly, but for barrier/warding purposes) have more than likely had to participate in some kind of fighting, it has to get translated to a fighting style! Also, I do realize that Aaron is a little anachronistically avant-garde for his time…just another reason for people to dismiss him as a nut, I guess.

As a result of all that, and the nature of this chapter in terms of content and mood, this chapter was an absolute beast in terms of writing difficulty and length. But so, so fun.

Thanks again to all the reviewers and readers. You guys make me smile! When I write this, I've come to thinking of you, and as such try my best to make sure what is coming out of me in regards to this story isn't utter drivel. You also make sure that I at least try to make the deadlines.

In terms of feedback, as things get more research-heavy, I would really appreciate people pointing out mistakes/errors/typos to make sure that I stay credible and am not operating on ignoramus-fuel. Thanks again for your vocal and silent (but vocal makes me feel better) support!

P.S. Final note: the first part of the opening scene is lifted directly from one of the flashbacks in the film. Thanks to yamina-chan for the video that allowed me to get the dialogue a little closer to the original. Oh yes, and to answer Yamina-chan's question: Aaron is eighteen. This is implied in one of the earlier chapters—historically, squires became knights at eighteen years old or after a particularly special feat.

_Threads of the Soul_

© DeskRage, 2010

_Student_

After descending the staircase and walking through a thick tunnel of soft-leaved fragrant bushes, Lucario felt as if he stepped into a strange world. His first impression was the natural world he was used to, but ordered, _tamed._ In the center lay a sparkling pool, its surface blue and shining as if its surface was made of a sheet of hadite, out of which a strange ivory structure gripped by curling vines sprouted like a pale flower. Ringing the pool was a neat hedge, from which spilled a narrow white path that rounded the courtyard. It took him a few moments to figure out what kind of trees lined the edges of the white path. Their neat, groomed appearances made them look altogether otherworldly next to the wild tangle and scrub of the woods and mountains he was used to. Compounding this was the altogether ghostly glow given off by the spears of hadite stabbing out of the ground and the flanks of the tower.

The tower that Sir Aaron was guiding him towards.

"This where we will live," he paused at the heavy double doors and turned to look at Lucario. His face was open and bright. He seemed lighter than he had in the days prior, "The training will be harsh."

"Yes, sir."

"I intend to teach you everything I know about being an Aura Guardian."

Lucario had felt like the precipice that he was used to seeing his life on had suddenly crumbled, but that suddenly a bridge was opening up in front of him. He just had to wait for it. But waiting and recovering with Maddock was as painful as breaking a tooth on a rock empty of iron.

And now, as if saving his life and giving him a purpose to live for was not enough, Sir Aaron was going to teach him about aura. Everything he knew! After a life starved of any kind of knowledge that he had so desperately craved, no training could be too harsh.

"Sir Aaron…!"

It was a gift, and nothing less. The customs of humans were still foreign to him, but teaching anyone anything was always something that required time and effort. On top of everything else, it seemed like too much. Lucario briefly wondered if there would ever be a time in his life where he would be able to consider something other than the massive debt he owed Sir Aaron, that debt that was ever plunging deeper with every breath he took.

The idea should have been horrendously unsettling. But for some reason…it was not.

Sir Aaron made that gesture again, where he touched his right fist to his left shoulder. The salute again. "The Aura is with me," he said. He had used that phrase before. Just the way he said it made Lucario think that there was something behind it, some kind of ritual. It meant more than just its words. Gestures, he already knew, had that power.

Lucario nodded.

Sir Aaron returned the gesture. "Trust in your aura," he told him. On that note, he pushed the doors open. They groaned in protest, yawning inwards to reveal the interior. A gust of stale, cool air whoosed out as if the inside was breathing. Walking inside gave Lucario the distinct impression of a cave, made of cold stone, suspended by two sculpted pillars. At the end of a truncated corridor there was another set of doors, identical to the ones they just entered through. On the other side of the supporting pillars opened up what Lucario assumed to be a living area. It was similar to Maddock's—the only other human whose dwelling he had entered—only in that it had a bed in it, but that's where the similarities ended.

At the foot of the bed was a large box that gave the impression of a fallen long, but only bigger and more blocky and squarish. It was simply ornamented, and the once-shiny lock that glimmered dully at its middle looked broken. A couple tongues of rumpled fabric poked out from the crack.

A simple wooden desk loomed in the corner. On it sheaves upon sheaves of different types of paper and books all superimposed on each other in a manner that reminded Lucario of the deciduous forest floor in autumn. A twisted candelabrum of grainy brass and crusted with what looked like some kind of wax practically seemed to grow out of the mess of paper like a twisted weed. Clustered around it were little shards of hadite of varying brightness in glow encased in little glass boxes, something that looked like a dried flower, and other various instruments Lucario had no hope of recognizing.

Paired with the desk was a gnarled chair that gave the impression it was trying to be a tree stump. Its wood was much darker, heavier and gave off the scent of age that the desk did not. On its back was a carving so worn that from across the room Lucario could not make out exactly what it was.

What struck him most though, was the bookshelf. Made of a heavy-smelling dark wood like the chair, it soared upwards like an oak tree so that in nearly touched the high ceiling. Its shelves were crammed with what seemed like hundreds of old, oddly cozy-smelling tomes bound in various soft hides and of every size imaginable. Many of them had little scraps of paper sticking out of them of wedged between them, or sagging, dog-eared pages. They did not seem particularly ordered. Compared to the neat bed and the order of the garden, the juxtaposition was a little jarring.

_You need so many books?_ He found himself wondering in awe. The Houndour had said long ago that it was because humans had bad memories so they had to carve their stories into these little leaves. It just never occurred to Lucario that there might be so much to write about at all.

"These are just the references that I use the most often," Sir Aaron said with a laugh in his voice. "There are a few centuries worth of knowledge from my predecessors upstairs. In addition to the works and references of the past Aura Guardians, I keep some other books on varying subjects. Let me show you."

Lucario followed him, mesmerized.

Past the second set of double doors there was a stairwell. On the second floor, there was a second set of rooms. Sir Aaron explained that this was where the apprentices, if there were any would stay. The room was clearly still maintained, but the tops of the little desks were a little dusty. Visiting scholars who came to visit Sir Aaron also had the option of staying here. The third floor was entirely devoted to the books that housed it. The door did not creak here—Sir Aaron clearly frequented it. The fourth floor was what Sir Aaron called an 'observatory'. It was characterized by a small balcony of sorts and large windows, as well as a damp, chilly atmosphere.

The final floor, though, was different. Here, there was a single door of storm-gray stone. It had no handle, but etched into its face was a high relief of what looked like some kind of…eye. In fact, it looked very much like an intricate rendition of the symbol on Sir Aaron's hat. In a glittering series along the door frame were clusters of hadite crystals. From beyond the door, Lucario could swear he felt some sort of presence.

Curious despite himself, he tried to see past the door using aura. There was a tremor in all his senses, as if they were a calm lake suddenly disturbed by a boulder crashing into its depths, accompanied by a strange hissing—he recoiled as if struck. It had almost sounded like an _exhale._

_Sir Aaron, what is in there?_

"To most of this castle, just a room." He ran his palm briefly across the surface. "For us, a reservoir of memory."

_More?_

"Different. When you are ready, you will enter this room."

Lucario looked up at him. His manner was confident, sure, but his aura pulsated with waves of what seemed like sadness. Regret.

When Sir Aaron volunteered nothing, he decided not to comment.

They were standing on a rocky outcrop about what Sir Aaron called a "mile" from the Palace that soared above the surrounding trees and scrub. From here, the World—the Tree of Beginning loomed in the distance, a lord among the mountains it rose from. The late spring sky was pale, but dark clouds coiled like angry smoke on the teeth of those distant peaks. Sir Aaron turned to face it, a small smile on his face. He gestured with this staff.

"Now, we start at the beginning."

Lucario found himself smiling in response, wondering why the words were so funny. It took him several heartbeats, but he then realized with a jolt that it was some kind of language joke. The humans called it the Tree of Beginning. _Let's start at the _beginning. What an odd form of humor. Unique to humans. And Pokemon who understood, of course.

"You know that the Aura is the energy within all things. The next thing that you need to know, is that like the workings of our bodies and the workings of nature, we do not know everything about how it works: only that it is a constant in our lives—and our connection to everything around us. Thus, it cannot be separated from our everyday realities…"

Sir Aaron talked for a long time. He spoke about how the Aura was like an element, similar to air, water, earth and fire. In the most ancient times, it had been called aether, but had become known as aura. Like an element, it is fundamental to the fabric of reality and the character of all things, even though it was invisible. It is pervasive, like the spirit—but is not just spirit because it could manifest on the terrestrial plane. However, it is unlike spirit in that it flows, like a river. Some bodies are better conduits for aura than others—specific types of stones and living beings, both human and Pokemon. The reason for this is still unknown.

Lucario hated himself for it, but more than once, he had to ask Sir Aaron to either repeat himself. But as time went on, he found himself able to grasp what he was saying. It was the longest time he had heard any one person speak at a time. By the time Sir Aaron started talking about conduits, he asked in order to clarify,

_Energy that flows more easily…so, the Aura is like the mouth of a river that branches off into little streams. Some streams flow more easily because they are wider and have less debris blocking them. That is how our bodies are? Creatures and stones that can use and sense aura?_

Sir Aaron's eyebrows arched in an expression that Lucario had come to regard as 'pleasant surprise'. He gave a tiny nod.

Lucario felt inordinately pleased with himself for this feat. However…

_Why is this?_ _What do we have that other creatures do not have? _Come to think of it…_Sir Aaron, pardon me for my rudeness, but what do humans use to sense aura?_ It had just occurred to him that humans did not have any special appendages that they seemed to use for this. Or rather, Sir Aaron, because he was the only one Lucario knew of.

Sir Aaron shook his head. "No one knows the answer to that." He paused and frowned, as though something had just occurred to him. Lucario cringed. Had he offended him? "Lucario," he asked suddenly, "You just asked if we used something to sense aura _with_. It is more a matter of _how_ we sense aura, both human and Pokemon alike. Are you implying that you sense aura with a part of your body?" He seemed excited, as if he had found something he had been looking for.

Lucario, on the other hand, felt a little foolish. His pride at having understood was Sir Aaron was talking about was quashed with that sentence like a rotten fruit. However, having brought it up and being asked a direct question by his master, he could hardly refuse to answer.

_I…my mother told me a long time ago a story of one of our kind who damaged one of his antennae. After that, he could not tell what kinds of creatures were around him with aura. He could hardly tell if it was his own mate or pup approaching. He could still sense it, but just not as well as he used to. She warned me that if I was not prudent in battle and managed to damage them all, I would never be able to sense it at all…_

Sir Aaron stroked his chin and furrowed his brows. He scrutinized Lucario for what felt like minutes, but in what were probably a few heartbeats, he straightened. He sounded pleased.

"You know, Lucario, I think even if you damaged all of your antennae you would still be able to sense aura. Even if the clarity, which seems to me is innate in certain life-forms like yourself, would be gone, it is always with you. Now, your antennae. They seem to give you special clarity that allow you to distinguish tiny nuances in the variation of aura. What I mean is that beings like you—Lucario— have bodies built especially for channeling aura. Special organs that provide near perfect aura flow, like the waves filter through them and allow you to read them more effectively than a human."

_Like the difference between the eyes of a Pidgeot and the eyes of a man?_

"Precisely."

_That would mean…_

"Lucario, besides the ability to create, humans are possessors of few superlative natural gifts." Perhaps Lucario had expected Sir Aaron to sound bitter for some reason. But in fact, he sounded quite the opposite, bright—cheery almost, as is he was stating that the sky was blue.

The lesson rolled on with the passage of the sun. Lucario end up finding himself lost in Sir Aaron's words. He spoke a lot in what he called 'overview' of the basics of aura—mostly things concerning its properties and how it has been traditionally harnessed and used, and its place in the cycle of all things. He explained aura signatures, and how humans generally were not able to perceive them. For Lucario, it seemed like the topics seemed to blend together, as much as he tried to stratify them in his mind as Sir Aaron certainly seemed to do. He was in awe of how Sir Aaron managed to keep it all straight.

About halfway through the lesson, Sir Aaron stopped, and had Lucario attempt to sense his own aura. "Reading another's aura will be difficult and foggy at best without a frame of reference."

It was like trying to scent himself. Near impossible. Sensing aura had always been a strange cross of nature and struggle, but never, ever had it been so _difficult._

"Try to focus on how your aura is connected to everything else's. Then, bring it back in and focus on your own. Think of yourself as a branch in a tree, or a rivulet running off a wide river."

It took him a long time to even start feeling a glimmer of what he figured he was supposed to feel. It was relatively easy for Lucario to find himself "branching out", but trying to retrace his steps so to speak left him feeling dizzy and just throwing his aura in the other direction.

Sir Aaron, as in during his lecture, was patient. He limited himself to occasional clues, even once stopping to show Lucario how to breathe properly. It was altogether bizarre at first. Even _breathing_ was controlled, released.

Eventually, when he finally managed it, Sir Aaron gave him a tiny nod of approval. After what felt like hours of straining and effort with little or no comment from his master, Lucario felt at last like he could relax.

To his dismay—though he did his best not to show it—Sir Aaron, just as quickly as he had turned from it, went back to lecturing. Or rather, quizzing Lucario on what he learned, and having him repeat the correct answers if he got them wrong.

Harsh indeed, Lucario thought a little numbly as he recited the properties of aura. But at the same time, not for a moment did he wish to be anywhere else.

"I thought I would find you here," a voice said.

So absorbed in what Aaron called their final breathing exercise and finding his own aura that Lucario had not noticed the approach. He stumbled to his feet—sitting cross-legged was new to him, and his paws were feeling tingly and uncomfortable to face the interlopers, only to find himself faced with the Crown Prince. At his side padded a noble Espeon, all shiny fur and gleaming, sunlight-glancing-off-ice eyes.

"Greetings, Sir Aaron."

Sir Aaron stood and offered a bow. Lucario copied him.

Despite the fact he felt like his concentration was nearly spent, Lucario made an effort to probe the auras of the newcomers. For all their friendly manner, the Crown Prince's aura seemed grave.

"To what do I owe the pleasure, your majesty?"

"I have some things I would like to discuss with you. I come as a friend, Sir Aaron, not just royalty."

Sir Aaron looked up. His expression had not changed, but his eyes seemed focused in their intensity.

"Very well."

His speech had not changed either, but the tone had. Such nuanced communication humans had. It was not terribly hard to follow, just complex. With every passing exchange it felt more and more natural.

"Come, then." Sir Aaron followed after the Crown Prince. Lucario moved as if to go with him, but was stopped when the Crown Prince extended a hand.

"Espeon, show Lucario around his new home, will you?"

Lucario looked to his master for a cue. His mouth jerked up in a little smile as he nodded. Lucario turned towards the Crown Prince.

_Yes, your majesty._

"You've taught him excellent manners, Aaron," the Crown Prince was saying to Sir Aaron as they walked away.

Lucario watched them go for a moment before Espeon commanded the rest of his attention. He seemed particularly big, for an Espeon. His hide bore no scars, but beneath his silky fur his muscles seemed toned and strong; his aura gave off waves of dominance. Not like the Infernape, whose aura was dark and his manner menacing, but bright and mighty, like the sun. Calming, almost.

Lucario guessed he had been raised by humans his whole life, given his princely manner. He was not sure how to respond to it. How 'human' should he act with a human-raised Pokemon…?

_Do not bow to me, my friend. We are all our master's servants. _Espeon said. There was a grin in his tone.

_Pardon me for saying, but it seems you have authority here, like your master._

Espeon was wry. _After a way. Follow me._

Their exploration of the castle was a lot more thorough than Lucario expected. He had never expected there to be so much…space. Part of what influenced this notion was that they literally started from the ground up. Or rather, from the ground, to the water, and up.

Espeon led him down a stairwell that seemed to descend deep into the ground, alternately by luminescent shafts of hadite and orange torches. The further they went the wamer and richer the air seemed to get. With every breath, Lucario felt like he was inhaling minerals and life. From somewhere up ahead, he could hear growls and rumbles, the scrape of rough hide over stong—eventually, the unmistakable scent of Aggron and Tyranitar.

_Relax,_ Espeon said.

The passage opened up into a huge cavern. Supported by great pillars composed of hadite, earth, iron and stone, it yawned out like the roof of some massive beast's mouth. In the center was a large pool of water, surrounded by clusters of hadite. Scooped into the walls of the cavern were what seemed like at least several dozen shallow caves of varying sizes, each housing some large Pokemon. There were many Rhyhorn, Rhydon, Phanpy and a few Donphan clumped together in little groups, at least a few Steelix and an Onix, Lairon, at least one scarred old Tyranitar, a few Charizard…

So many territorial Pokemon, down here.

_How are they all able to live alongside each other?_ He asked in awe, watching as a Lairon and a Rhyhorn seemed involved in an almost _friendly_ looking tussle over a large chunk of iron ore.

Iron ore. His spikes throbbed at just the sight of it—and it was everywhere. It could be found in large troughs situated at various points throughout the caverns, each according to species, it seemed. How could they be _sharing iron, _especially, those of the Aggron family.

_Well, how do you expect them to live? _Espeon chuckled. _Some are better at getting along than others, but we're all friends here._

A loud crash behind them—both turned to see a snarling Rhydon looming protectively over a trough, using a small Lairon as some kind of foot rest. It was growling in protest, but did not otherwise seem injured.

_For the most part, anyway. Here, the Water types are a little more laid back._

He followed Espeon, tempted to snatch a couple of pebbles of iron ore. But making himself unpopular down here seemed like a very bad idea. He knew to be at least a little wary of other iron eaters.

"_What are you doing down here, Espeon?"_

The old Tyranitar had heaved herself off her perch and cut them off. She was huge, scarred, but with eyes as ready and quick as a Swellow. Espeon flicked his tail.

_Being a good host. Commander Nath's Tyranitar, this is Sir Aaron's Lucario._

Commander Nath!

The Tyranitar bent down and sniffed at Lucario. Lucario was unused to such proximity by such a normally territorial species, he tried hard to stay still and act polite.

"_Sir Aaron's? You're the one who talks to humans."_

_Yes._

"_You survived quite the chase getting here. Are you as tough as the stories make you out to be, small one?"_

_Perhaps._

"_Nice manners. But can you fight?"_

Just by Espeon's aura, Lucario he was being evaluated by his answer. A conventional one probably would not be satisfactory.

_When something is worth fighting for._

"_So how about your life?" _The Tyranitar leaned in.

What kind of a question was that? _Now that my life is not just my own it is._

The Tyranitar roared and leaned back on her haunches. _"Good answer. I like you. Loyalty is the best thing you can ask in anyone. Become stronger, back that up always." _She stomped off, snapping at an Aagron in her wake, who in turn—amazingly—backed down.

Lucario felt a little dazed watching her leave.

_You know, I wonder if it is because you are at least partly an iron eater that she took to you, or if it was actually your character. _Espeon said. _But either way, that was impressive. She rules down here._

_I can see that…_

The Water-type piers were located in an alclove of the tiny island that the castle was situated on. The water was alive with sleek, colorful bodies of the water types as they flew through the water. Lucario had never seen anything larger than a big Feebass or Magikarp in his life, and suddenly seeing things whose names he knew instinctively knew from his mother's memories was like being in a very strange dream.

There was a sleek Dewgong sunning herself on the sandy stretch beside the pier. She also did not have scars. Lucario was beginning to wonder how much battle these Pokemon actually saw.

_Come on! _Espeon was already at the very edge of the pier. He turned his face out to the water and issued a sharp _call_ that rang through his mind like a bell—a ripple of not-quite-sound that Lucairo knew was psychic.

There was a thrumming sound, and a large shape shadow seemed to materialize from the water before breaking the surface with a hissing splash.

"_No need to call so rudely. To what do I owe—oh."_

Introductions followed. The Ferliagatr's master, as it turned out, belonged to Captain Rio. Upon learning of Lucario's identity, he snorted and proceeded to haul himself out of the water. He slipped onto land with what seemed like excessive caution to Lucario and waddled over to the sunning Dewgong, who conceded territory and returned to the water to make space for him. His walk was awfully practiced-looking.

"_Do not deceive yourself, Lucario. In order to be useful to our masters and comrades, we all learn skills against our nature."_

_He wants you to be impressed with his walking on land, _Espeon told him so that only he could hear. _Feraligatr do not typically walk on land much._

_But he is talking about my speech as if it is something unnatural, _Lucario grumbled in reply. _It is as natural to me as breathing._

He suddenly thought of the breathing excercises Aaron was teaching him to do. He shoved the thought away. That was unrelated.

_Yes, but is your manner around the humans?_

Like with the old Tyranitar, he conceded territory in his manner instead of the way he spoke to the Feraligatr. At least the magnificent Water type seemed satisfied.

Instead of taking him to the stockyard where Lucario had been housed for the past seven days or so—Espeon was teaching him units of time that were useful to know along the way, and seven days, as it turned out, was a 'week'—but rather led him up, up, up into one of the highest towers the castle had. It was larger, and shaped differently than the others, and full of what looked like holes.

The aviary, as it was called, was home to flyers. Flying types of all kinds zipped in and out of the holes of varying sizes, just like the caverns below.

Again, it was a little unsettling to see so many large flying-types, territorial and aggressive in one space.

_You'll get used to it._

_Who is the lord here?_

_She is not here, it seems, _Espeon mused, looking around. _The Duke of Margham's Stararaptor._

Duke of Margham. That sour, aggressive man who had instantly disdained both Lucario and his master. Stararaptor were aggressive. Perhaps it was best that she was not present.

They turned to go. But as Lucario followed the Espeon out, he noticed an oddly familiar aura in the corner. Inturigued, he turned to face it. It was a Pidgeot, unusually large for a male, hunched and dark in a shadowy corner of the aviary. Only his eyes and auras seemed to glow. Where had Lucario recognized—

Of course. Sir Aaron had spoken to him about the Pidgeot. The Pidgeot, Sir Aaron's other servant.

They made eye contact. It was something that Lucario found that almost every Pokemon in this place seemed to do without thinking, apparently finding it natural. He was taken aback by the flinty glare he received. He swallowed. Maybe this Pokemon did take territoriality more seriously than the others here.

_Thank you. If not for you, I would still not be alive. I look forward—_

"_Our master is kind. Do not misplace your thanks." _The voice was harsh, grating, as if his voice was produced by rubbing rusty iron together. He did not look it, but his age and manner—and come to think of it, his scarred feet and beak indicated both age and experience. Without warning, he spread his massive wings, producing a _whoosh_ so low and loud it hurt Lucario's ears. The Pidgeot blazed past him so fast the resulting gust nearly knocked Lucario off the tower.

Espeon, who had flattened himself onto a ledge to keep from getting blown off glanced at him askance.

_Good job. I think that is the most he has said in several months._

_Is he always like that? _Lucario asked gloomily.

_Take comfort in that he usually is. He is pretty territorial. I am surprised he has not fought Margham's Stararaptor._

For a moment, Lucario wondered that exact thing. Then, he remembered that the Pokemon here tended to reflect their masters, by the Espeon's own admission. Fighting for dominance is not something Sir Aaron tended to do overtly, it seemed. As such…

His thoughts were interrupted by a screech as something heavy descended on his back and shoulders. Unprepared, this one did send him toppling over the side. Wildly, he jammed his spikes into the stone of the tower, jerking them to an agonizing halt that made him feel like his bones were about to rip out of their paws. That, and Espeon had grabbed his left ear.

"_Whoops, thanks for catching me," _the thing on his back said. It roughly used his shoulders and head as a staircase and hopped up onto the ledge with the Espeon and helped pull Lucario up.

The moment he was stable again, Espeon pounced angrily on the new arrival's chest.

_You absolute idiot, _he snapped. _What did I tell you going into the aviary?_

The newcomer was a Sneasel. She was fine-boned and weirdly fragile-looking. Most of the Sneasels that Lucario had ever seen looked a little tougher and bigger than her, even the other females. But her claws seemed just that much sharper, her eyes just a little brighter. She laughed, showing finely pointed, almost unnaturally white teeth.

"_Yes, yes. I am very sorry about that. I have a terrible memory—yowch!"_

Espeon pressed a paw to the base of her neck.

_Then please remember for the third time. The fourth time will not end so well for you._

"_Threats from the Crown Prince's Espeon?"_

_Remember what we are._

That seemed to shut her up. She apologized and repeated a short litany of things she was apparently not allowed to do, among which was sneak into the aviary and eat eggs she found.

Espeon let her up at last. _As long as we are clear, Sneasel. You are in this castle now, and must follow its rules. You thank Mew that Stararaptor is not here. He may have actually killed you, and been justified in it._

"_You doubt my ability?"_

_You have never seen a real battle._

The Sneasel shrugged. Then, as if noticing Lucario for the first time, grinned and waved. _"Hi there. Sorry about nearly dropping you off the side of the building. I'm Sir Cennar's Sneasel, formerly of Aklkadian Palace, naturalized here."_

Lucario blinked. From what he had seen of Sir Cennar, the man was timid, bordering on meek with a heavy tinge of nervous energy. This Sneasel was everything but that. But in her irreverent manner, there was no malice.

_Um…pleased to meet you._

"_Hey, you're Sir Aaron's new Pokemon? Yeah, don't mind Pidgeot. He's a regular old stick in the mud, if you get my meaning. I'm sure you'll get along fine. Can I come with you? You're the one who talks, right? You look like you guys are having fun."_

Espeon gave an exaggerated-looking sighing gesture. Lucario almost laughed. It was such a ridiculous thing to see on something that did not normally sigh, but he controlled himself. He ought to be getting used to these sorts of behaviors. _Very well. I suppose you'll get up to less mischief with us._

Sneasel talked a _lot_. Lucario tended towards the laconic—he had never encountered someone who felt like she had to talk about…well, everything. Even the Houndour had been more contained. Sneasel talked about everything that seemed to fly into her head at random—how she wished she had three toes instead of two, or how the sky's color was different than yesterday, what her favorite hats to steal, her "patented"—what did that word even mean?—scare tactics in the stables were, what Espeon had been up to lately,how the armor that the humans were wearing looked silly, and what sorts of things did Lucario like to eat?

It was surprising that a creature that he suspected to be a lot cleverer than she let on presented such an image. Were these just the masks of living with humans—to be disarming, instead of threatening like in the wild? He thought of Sir Aaron, who presented a very humble, almost meek image to his rulers at that conversation with the king.

He told her that among the things he ate was iron. Embarrassingly, his stomach roared its displeasure.

Sneasel fell over laughing.

_She really is too much, _Espeon grumbled. _It's not that funny. Must you overreact like that?_

At this point, Lucario might have found the Sneasel's antics as amusing as they were foreign, but actually having his guts remind him that he desperately needed some iron ore dampened the mood. His spikes and teeth _ached._

"_Here, let's go visit the blacksmith. I'm sure he won't begrudge you a little snack. Can we, Espeon?"_

Espeon looked at Lucario. Lucario, not wanting to project an air of neediness tried to mask his thoughts and aura, but the Psychic was too fast.

_You haven't had ore in over a week? What was Maddock feeding you?_

…_I…_

"_Spit it out, will you?"_

_I need iron ore in small amounts every couple of days._

_Like a Ponyta's salt lick?_

_What's that?_

Espeon told him. Lucario nodded. _Yes, like that._

The Psychic hesitated. _Well…_

Lucario liked the forge. It was warm, glowed with a fascinating tamed fire, and most importantly sizzled with minerals. Inside, he could hear a metallic clanging of metal on metal. Here, he learned from his guides, is where they made _steel_, a kind of refined iron that was stronger and better than the ore itself. And they used it in order to make themselves weapons, because humans, as he knew, had very few natural ones to defend themselves. Lucario could understand that logic.

Getting a piece of iron, though…

Espeon, was a Psychic. Technically, he could think his thoughts at humans, but they were never as clear, apparently, as actual speech. In this case, Lucario was not sure if he was telling the truth. Sneasel of course, was useless in this regard. Unfortunately, the question of talking to the blacksmith was rendered moot when both the blacksmith and his apprentice left—for what, the trio had no idea.

"_Well, no one's in there. Go on," _Sneasel urged.

_I'll keep a lookout,_ supplied Espeon, who leaped onto the roof of the forge. Lucario steeled himself as he encroached on another's territory. Sensing another presence, he attempted to branch out with his aura. He touched upon something else, but its shape was…weird. He did not recognize it much, and the smell of fire, coal and ore was so strong it was all he could scent.

He approached a trough of chunks of unrefined ore, and failed to notice the massive steel jaws before they almost crushed his paw.

"_You thief!" _the Mawile screamed, burrowing out of the trough. Lucario grabbed the ore in his paws and sprinted out of the forge faster than the Mawile could chase, happily surrendering to the instinct to get out of its defined territory. He knocked over a couple of weapons and shovels in his attempt to flee, closely followed by Sneasel and Espeon.

They managed to make their escape, stopping right outside the arena and into one of the deep shadows. The sun was setting now, and long shadows were ample places to hide. Lucario gratefully sucked on the iron, already feeling the nutrients swim back into his bones. Now his gums were a pleasant ache of healing.

"_That was awesome," _Sneasel chortled.

_Why didn't you tell me there was a Mawile in there?_

_I thought you would have sensed it._

"_I just thought it would be hilarious."_

_Well…at least we're here. I'm all tired out at this point, but I can show you the ring before we all retire. _Espeon yawned. _I really need to get back to my master._

_So do I, _Lucario agreed.

He buried the chunk of ore shallowly so he could retrieve it on his way back home. Espeon bypassed the doors easily thanks to his rank—Lucario, on the other hand, invited odd stares from trainer and Pokemon alike.

It was just then that he realized how much he did wish Sir Aaron was there with him.

Espeon was moving to introduce them when three familiar auras prickled at Lucario's senses. Near the gate that they had just entered were Skylar's Pokemon: the magnificent, proud Rapidash with angry eyes, the slinking Luxray, and the Infernape, all long shadows and flame.

"_I heard the commotion," _the Rapidash snorted. He had a voice like a valley in a storm. _"Already running into trouble?"_

"_He has made friends already. He's quite…the adaptable thing."_

Lucario felt his hackles rising. He had had enough of the Infernape's posturing, but refused to let his anger show. He stifled his body as much as he could and tried to calm his aura. To his surprise—

"_Piss off!" _snapped Sneasel, fangs bared.

_Perhaps, _ventured the Espeon calmly, as if there was no hostility in the air at all, _a fellow wildborn should remember where he came from._

The Infernape—a wildborn?

By now, a small crowd of Pokemon—and on the periphery, trainers had appeared. There was tension mounting in the air, like dust that had been kicked up over the course of a vicious fight, thickening the air and making it hard to breathe.

The auras of those gathered—no one here _liked_ the Infernape. When it came to him everyone's auras seemed such a writhing mess of fear and resentment that he could not tell the difference between them. So certainly Lucario had not been the only one who felt threatened, or had even been threatened. What could make an entire group of Pokemon feel so hostile towards a single being, when territorial predators managed to put aside their differences and live peacefully in this castle?

Lucario felt the urge to fight conflict with the desire to flee. He could not beat the Infernape. Not now. And what would Sir Aaron say, if he got into a fight on his first real day at the castle? He gritted his teeth. He appreciated his new friend's efforts on his behalf, but that was where things got too human.

"_Perhaps you should speak for yourself, Lucario. That, or choose your friends more wisely."_

What better friends could be wiser to take than the Crown Prince's own Espeon? He had not known either him or the Sneasel long, but somehow, Lucario felt that this was more than anyone in Skylar's group had.

_Perhaps you should start by choosing friends._

There was silence. Heavy, cold silence that dripped over the backs of everyone's head and neck like the goo from a broken Pidgey egg, drizzling down all their spines. The dust-tension seemed to freeze in the air, just waiting to snap.

The Rapidash snapped it—with an incredulous, whinnying laugh.

Without a word, the Infernape, the Luxray and the Rapidash, turned to go.

The crowd dispersed like a puff of smoke, leaving Lucario standing there, breathing hard.

Sneasel's eyes were huge. _"I can't believe you said that."_

Neither can I, Lucario thought. But he did not say that.

_I'm impressed. When it comes to picking your friends and enemies, you sure don't go half way. _Espeon said.

"_Yeah!" _Sneasel added. _"Aren't you afraid he'll kill you in the night?"_

_No, _Lucario said. He thought of the Infernape's bold threats. His careless display of power before him. The aggression and dominance he exuded when he walked, scattering others before him. No, he liked bold displays. _That is not his way._

"_Lucario, he's killed Pokemon in the ring before! There's a reason we all hate him!"_

As I thought, Lucario thought bitterly. He would rather kill me in the light of day, with the sun shining on my broken body.

That sounded about right.

But death was not an option any more. He could not be irresponsible with the life he had been given back.

"The tournament has been scheduled for three months from now."

"That is quite short notice."

"Given the situation, I'm not sure any longer would be prudent."

"Indeed."

Aaron and the Crown Prince were walking through one of the three main gardens at the castle. Each one was distilled, stylized and glorified nature—nature in the essence or how skilled artists might capture fire and make it beautiful. Such were the talented gardeners of the palace and their Pokemon. Flowering hadite crystal, manicured trees, bushes and flower, blooms of every kind, even imported ones from the south given meticulous care turned this castle in a harsh country into an oasis of beauty. A simple irrigation system of clear, mineral-rich water fed the flower beds. Nowhere in the nations of their neighbors would one find such a place, where any spare money and talent went straight to the forge to make instruments of death.

However, this talk was all very simple and business like. Aaron was waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak. The Crown Prince clearly came here so as not to be overheard. However, one simply did not ask the Crown Prince to get to the point.

"The dispute over the Lucario's life…" the Crown Prince said at last, "has been settled. My father and I have discussed it with the senior lawyers. There are obviously a few who are irritated, but please bear with their foolishness. They will see sense or go mad."

"Thank you." Aaron had bore with it for a long time. It was nothing new, but the phrasing made him smile.

There was another unwelcome silence. The Crown Prince's aura became twitchy and fidgety, even if outwardly the man resembled the calmest of pools on a clear day. Such was his training, but he was clearly out of his depth. There were few topics that made him get like this, and Aaron could feel his heart sinking. With a small sigh, he ventured, "Is something wrong, your highness?"

The Crown Prince passed a bench. He looked like he might sit down, but resisted at the last minute. He allowed himself to run a hand though his hair.

"It's my sister."

Aaron's blood chilled.

"Father is insisting on her return in light of the recent attacks. Her training is over. It would not have been long before she would have returned to us, but he is adamant. He sent a letter by Pidgeotto the night of the attack. Just this morning, we received a letter back."

"Just what has this got to do with me…?" Aaron could barely force the words out.

"She has requested that you specifically go and head her escort. She wants you to be the one who brings her back."


End file.
